The Palace of Whitehall looked less forbidding in the sunshine and there was no army of armed men crouching behind its parapet. Marlowe walked in, having shown his papers to the guard and found his way to the inner sanctum that was Robert Cecil’s lair. The little man was perched like a monkey on his windowsill, his back to the panelling, his pipe in his mouth.
‘Morning, Marlowe.’ He looked up through a wreath of smoke. ‘What news?’
Marlowe sat in what was fast becoming his usual chair. It didn’t look as though a glass of wine was in the offing, so he began. ‘You and your father were right,’ he said. ‘Eunice Brown was murdered.’
Cecil nodded, his large eyes hooded against the smoke. ‘And?’
‘It’s my guess her murderer was a visitor, somebody who was in and out of Hatfield, but with a reason to be there.’
Cecil frowned. That made little sense to him. ‘Why would a passing stranger run the risk of getting into the house, finding Noo-Noo’s chamber and murdering her? There must be easier targets.’
‘I believe I spoke to all your father’s servants,’ Marlowe told him. ‘From Cruikshank to the stable lads. You and I, Sir Robert, are used to interrogating people. We watch for the flutter of the eyelid, the twitch of the mouth. If any of them was lying, I missed it. Nobody had a bad word to say about Goody Eunice.’
There was a clatter in the passageway outside and the sound of raised voices. Cecil hopped down from his perch, extinguishing the pipe, opening the window and fanning away the smoke.
‘Father!’ he just had time to say before the most powerful man in the country swept in.
Burghley was shouting at someone in the passageway. ‘And you can tell the Earl of Essex … Never mind, I’ll do it myself.’ He turned his attention to the room, frowned and sniffed. ‘Do you drink smoke, Marlowe?’ he asked.
The projectioner was on his feet out of respect and he bowed. ‘Anyone who doesn’t love tobacco is a fool, my Lord … or so I’ve heard it said.’
‘Have you?’ Burghley sneered. ‘I should look to your company, Marlowe.’
‘Marlowe has some news, Father,’ Cecil said, sitting down behind his desk. ‘About Noo-Noo.’
‘Ah,’ Burghley poured a goblet of Rhenish and, against all probabilities, gave one to Marlowe. He didn’t do the honours in respect of his son; presumably wine, like tobacco, was bad for him. ‘I have just come from the good woman’s funeral. Quite beautiful. Parry excelled himself.’
More than you know, thought Marlowe.
‘Say on.’ Burghley sat on the corner of Cecil’s desk and all but eclipsed the little man behind it.
‘Marlowe thinks …’ Cecil began, but Burghley held up his hand for silence.
‘I know he does,’ the old man said. ‘That, I assume, is why you employ him.’ He looked at the projectioner. ‘Marlowe?’
‘I believe that Eunice was killed by someone visiting your estate, my Lord,’ he said. ‘I understand they are legion.’
The Queen’s Councillor nodded. ‘They are indeed. I like clever men around me, Marlowe, I see nothing wrong with that. Philosophy, ethics, geography, things of that nature.’
‘Politics?’ Marlowe threw in. ‘Religion?’
‘Ah, well, we have to tread warily there of course, in these dangerous times.’
Marlowe couldn’t help wondering whether the times would be a little less dangerous without these two. ‘It’s the manner of Eunice’s death that I can’t fathom.’
Burghley looked at the playwright with hauteur not unmixed with contempt. ‘Fathoming is what my son pays you to do,’ he said. ‘What, in particular, vexes you?’
‘There was a great deal of force used on Mistress Brown,’ Marlowe said. ‘Much more than was necessary in the case of a frail old lady.’
‘Lots of bruising,’ Cecil recalled.
‘Applied not once, but over a period of time – longer, I suspect, than it would take to actually kill her.’
‘Someone who enjoys pain for its own sake?’ Burghley was wondering aloud, ‘a Topcliffe, you might say.’
The keeper of the Queen’s instruments of torture was renowned throughout Europe. He would have made short work of Eunice Brown.
‘Yet someone struck by remorse,’ Marlowe reasoned.
‘I don’t understand,’ Burghley frowned.
‘Eunice’s chamber is not cut off from the rest of the house,’ Marlowe said. ‘Other servants’ quarters are nearby. Our murderer had to act quietly and, for his own safety, quickly. And yet, this murder was done slowly, piecemeal almost, as if the man lost his nerve in the process and had to begin again. And I’ve seen this somewhere before.’
‘You have?’ Cecil sat up. ‘Where?’
‘Cambridge, not three weeks ago. That was a drowning accident, or so it seemed. The dead man’s brother was also attacked and tells a tale of a tentative killer, who kept letting him go. There are parts of the story which seem to match that of the Hatfield killing, others of which we can never be sure.’
‘Never is a big word, Master Marlowe,’ Burghley said.
‘The murderer in Cambridge spoke. We can’t know whether the Hatfield one did the same. But even so, there are resonances. Did Eunice have any connections with Cambridge?’
The Cecils looked at each other, shaking their heads.
‘Or Poppleton? The Cambridge scholar came from there.’
‘Where in God’s green earth is Popp … what did you call it?’
‘Poppleton. It’s near York.’
‘No, Marlowe,’ Burghley said. ‘Noo-Noo was born in Hertfordshire and came to work for us as a girl. Her mother was my wet nurse so, as you can tell, we have known her family as far back as is possible. They all lie in the churchyard at Etheldreda’s. You spoke to Dr Parry, I assume?’
Marlowe smiled at the memory of it. ‘I did,’ he said. ‘A good man, I think.’
‘The best,’ Burghley assured him. ‘Could he help?’
‘Not at all. I suppose, my Lord, a list of visitors to Hatfield in the last week would be out of the question.’
‘Utterly.’ Burghley spread his arms. ‘Oh, I know I should take more care with people coming to the house. Robert is always twittering about it, aren’t you, Robert?’
The Queen’s Imp nodded. Both men knew that Robert could twitter until Hell froze over and it would do no good.
‘You’d have to question every member of the Privy Council,’ Burghley went on. ‘Not a few ambassadors from every country from France to Muscovy. And every one of them has more hangers-on than I’ve books in my library. I suspect you’d grow old before you got through all of them, Marlowe, not to mention the stink you’d cause on the international relations front. We’ve got enough enemies in Europe as it is, without adding more.’
‘Then, for the moment, gentlemen,’ Marlowe said, getting up, ‘I can do no more. Oh, one favour, my Lord, if I may?’
Burghley looked at the man. He had to admit, he felt a little let down. Francis Walsingham had always spoken highly of Marlowe; his own son did too, albeit through gritted teeth. But Marlowe seemed to have made no progress at all and linking the death of his dear Noo-Noo with some threadbare university scholar was a pointless exercise. ‘Name it.’ For all that, Burghley was, deep down, a kind man.
‘The theatres, my Lord. Rumour has it that the Pestilence is subsiding. Many of my associates rely on their stage income to live. Couldn’t the ban be lifted? The theatres be reopened?’
‘Dr Forman says “No”,’ Burghley said. ‘And he is the foremost authority on the damned disease that we have. Sorry, Marlowe, but there it is.’
‘But, Dr Dee—’
Burghley gave a bark of laughter. ‘All very well in his day, but he is nowhere near Simon Forman.’
Marlowe would agree with that. He could tell that he had driven that particular pig as far along the passage as it would go and knew when to stop. ‘Very well, my Lord.’ He bowed to them both and smiled when he caught sight of Cecil’s pipe stem sticking out of his Venetians. ‘I will wish you both good day.’
In the doorway he turned. ‘By the way,’ he said, ‘whatever happened to Nicholas Faunt?’
‘Faunt?’ Burghley repeated. ‘Why do you ask?’
‘As you know, my Lord, I worked with the man several times back in the day. I thought I saw him recently, though it may have been a trick of the light.’
‘Nicholas Faunt was Sir Francis Walsingham’s creature,’ Cecil said, tartly. ‘Yesterday’s man. He will never darken these doors again.’
Marlowe smiled, bowed again and left. He had just reached the staircase when he heard the clatter of pattens behind him. Lord Burghley, his cup discarded, was scurrying to catch him.
‘My Lord?’ Marlowe turned to face him.
Burghley was shifty, glancing back over his shoulder. ‘Look, Marlowe, I don’t want this noised abroad, if you get my drift?’ He was nodding in the direction of his son’s chamber. ‘But Faunt is still in my employ. Robert doesn’t like him, so I’m keeping it quiet. But men like Faunt don’t grow on trees. He has his uses.’
‘I’m sure he does, my Lord,’ Marlowe said.
‘Where did you see him? Not Hatfield, surely?’
‘In Bedlam,’ Marlowe said, ‘the asylum for the insane.’
For a moment, Burghley turned pale, blinking in the half-light of the stair. ‘Yes,’ he said, slowly. ‘That would make sense.’
And Kit Marlowe was glad of that because, at that moment, nothing else did.
He took to the streets that skirted Whitehall and made for Charing Cross. The ancient monument looked greyer than ever now that the weak October sun had gone and the clouds had taken its place. There was the usual crowd of rough sleepers clustered at its base, the flotsam of a country ruled by the Cecils. One of them, in dark grey, but less ragged than the others, was staring intently at Marlowe. He got up and strolled towards him, tentatively at first, then increasing his stride.
‘Master Marlowe!’ he greeted him.
Marlowe stood still. There, in the less than flattering gown of a King’s scholar, stood Richard Williams, whose brother had died in the Cam not four weeks earlier. ‘Master Williams.’ Marlowe shook the lad’s hand. ‘What brings you to the Cross?’
‘I have not been well, Master Marlowe.’ The boy looked thin and pale. ‘After Roger … I could not settle to my studies. The Master has given me sabbatical leave; he was very understanding. So I have come to London to stay with my aunt in Clerkenwell.’
‘You took the North Road?’ Marlowe asked. ‘On foot?’
‘I did, but I accepted a lift from a tinker’s cart and ended up in Hatfield.’
‘Hatfield?’ Marlowe’s eyes narrowed. ‘That was out of your way.’
‘It was.’ Williams felt a little foolish. ‘I fell asleep in the cart and, before I knew it, I was lying in a ditch by the parish church.’
‘St Etheldreda’s.’ Marlowe nodded.
‘Do you know it?’ Williams asked.
‘Intimately,’ Marlowe said. ‘Tell me, Richard. When was this? When were you in Hatfield?’
‘Er … last week, I think. To tell you true, since Roger … I have lost all sense of time.’
Marlowe looked at the boy. Grief and repeated immersion in water had taken its toll. But was there more to it? The boy, himself a murder victim but for the Grace of God, had been in Hatfield, when God or the Devil took Eunice Brown. ‘Come with me,’ Marlowe said. ‘You look as if you could do with a square meal. And then, we’ll get you off to Clerkenwell. Your aunt; she’s a kind woman, I hope.’
‘The kindest,’ Williams answered. He squared his shoulders in his ugly gown and took the first step of the rest of his life.
Marlowe was not sorry to have a reason to visit Simon Forman, in his lair. Ever since meeting him accidentally, he had wanted to find out more. It was hard to read his face behind the mask and, surely, there was more to the man than simply conjuring, glamour and some small amphibians? His house was not hard to find. A small gaggle of importunate sufferers from various diseases, some all too apparent, others more covert, stood outside the door. A young man in a dark blue robe stood on the threshold, with a satchel at his hip. As each person moved to the head of the line, the lad put a hand on their head and presented them with a sachet from the bag; from a distance, it reminded Marlowe of nothing so much as the Mass; the benediction and the body of their Lord. He hung back until the last of the sachets had been distributed.
The lad raised his voice so all in the line could hear. ‘The magus must be allowed time now to prepare some more tinctures,’ he said. ‘Please disperse so as to give him the peace he needs; when he knows that his beloved countrymen are suffering at his door, it interferes with his link to the all-healing powers that only he can harness.’ The small crowd shifted for a moment, but there was clearly not going to be any more healing that day, so they wandered away, in ones and twos, limping, coughing, in one case carried on a makeshift stretcher.
When they had all gone, Marlowe approached the door and stopped the apprentice as he turned to close it.
‘I’m sorry.’ The voice was kindly, with a hint of country burr in it. ‘The magus must be allowed—’
‘Yes. I heard.’
‘So …’ the boy pushed the door to, but Marlowe’s foot was in it and it wouldn’t close.
‘I must see Master Forman.’
‘The magus—’
‘Can you say nothing else?’ Marlowe could see intelligence in the eyes, but there seemed to be no one at home. ‘I am not sick, as you can possibly tell. In fact, friends who know these things, Dr John Dee for example, tell me I am in the rudest of health and will live to be ninety. I want to see Master Forman on another matter altogether.’
The apprentice looked doubtful. He felt a bit of a fool repeating his message again, but didn’t know what else to say.
Marlowe put him out of his misery. ‘Look … what is your name?’
‘Gerard, sir.’
‘Gerard what? Or is it what Gerard?’
The boy raised his eyes and again appeared to recite. ‘Until we find our calling, forenames only are all we require. Our name for using about our business will come to us when the time is right.’
Marlowe nodded thoughtfully. ‘Hence “Forman”, I assume.’
‘The magus received his name in a vision, yes. And he is indeed foremost among men.’
There was something in Gerard’s manner that made Marlowe look again. What he had taken for possible hypnotic trance, or some herbal tincture controlling him, he saw now was doubt. Something about the magus was troubling the boy and he had time enough to discover what. The garish robe was a little too big and was fraying around the sleeve. The haircut was designed to look monkish but the lad, as lads everywhere will, had brushed it forward over his ears and dampened it down with water; it couldn’t control its tendency to curl and it looked rather innocent and pleasing. Marlowe knew how to handle his curls and used them to great effect to extract information from duchess and doxy alike, but he remembered how he had felt about them when he was not yet twenty.
‘Well,’ he said, confidentially, ‘my name is Marlowe, but I have been called many things from Marley to Machiavel. I wonder what I should have called myself had I not kept my father’s name.’
Gerard stepped back. ‘Christopher Marlowe?’ he said. ‘Christopher Marlowe? The poet.’
Marlowe shrugged. ‘Amongst other things.’
‘I wondered if it could be you,’ Gerard said. ‘But so many people copy your hair, your clothes …’
Marlowe found that fact slightly disturbing. He had never noticed although, now he came to think of it, Shaxsper had been doing strange things with his thinning locks of late.
‘Your plays …’ Gerard found he was stage-struck. ‘So wise. The poetry …’
‘Yes. Thank you. Er … Gerard, is it?’
‘Yes.’
‘Gerard, I would like to meet your master, but first, can we walk a little? Do you have to be back inside? Report on the size of the crowd, that kind of thing.’ It was the kind of thing that Henslowe did all the time, people running hither and thither, telling him how many groundlings, how many gallants, and so how much his coffers would benefit. And, in their own ways, Forman and Henslowe were but two cheeks of one arse.
Gerard took an anxious look behind him into the dark interior of the house. ‘I can spare a little time,’ he said. A walk with Kit Marlowe – who wouldn’t spare a little time for that?
‘There is an alehouse just down the lane – you are allowed ale, I assume?’
The apprentice bridled. ‘I am allowed anything. We all are. We are not slaves, you know, Master Marlowe, we are apprentices. Full apprentices.’
Marlowe nodded his apology. ‘Then come this way,’ he said. ‘The ale is fresh and the serving wenches clean. Who could ask for more?’
The shakes came upon him a little before noon. The sky over Bedlam was an opaque grey, spitting with rain. For weeks now, Tom Sledd had struggled to live in this place. The grey gruel kept him alive and fleas and lice were his constant companions. He could hear the bell of All Hallows on the Wall tolling, for a midday funeral was his guess. There were never any christenings or weddings, nothing for a fast, happy peal of bells, just the solemn tocsin.
Tom Sledd wasn’t really of a miserable disposition, but his weeks in this circle of Hell had all but broken him. All he could remember of the outside world was Robert Greene in his coffin, the worms lining up to eat him, the odd crow circling overhead. And Greene’s coffin became, in his mind, Sledd’s coffin. He was in it, yet walking behind it, all at the same time. Six men were carrying their solemn load – Kit Marlowe, Will Shaxsper, Philip Henslowe, Richard Burbage, Ned Alleyn and Will Kemp. But they weren’t solemn. Kemp was whirling his damned pig’s bladder over his head. Alleyn and Burbage were trying to outshout each other with the mighty pentameter of Kit Marlowe. The playwrights were reading out competing prologues of plays, their voices rising in crescendo. Henslowe was counting his money, flinging gold coins into the coffin to lie with Sledd. The wreck who was once stage manager at the Rose huddled his knees under his chin and sobbed.
It was a while before he felt the fingers fiddling at his belt, the one he had been toying with using to hang himself with if this madness went on for much longer. A large man was leaning against him, trying to get at the purse which still dangled, empty, from his belt. Sledd frowned, wiping the tears from his eyes and trying to focus. He recognized the man as one who seemed to spend most of his time humping the younger women against the far wall. He had been listening to his grunts and their cries for weeks now.
‘Get away!’ Sledd shoved him but he was too heavy to move.
‘Got any cake?’ the man asked, though clearly his real target was altogether rounder and made of silver.
‘Cake?’ Sledd repeated. ‘No, I haven’t. Just the slops we all get, same as you. Keep your hands off me.’
‘As you wish,’ the man grumbled. He half turned, then turned back. ‘Pax vobiscum, my son,’ he said, and burst out laughing before rolling away.
‘Got him,’ a dark voice said in his other ear. Sledd spun round to see the poet looking at him, a smile on his face. ‘I knew it could only be a matter of time. And I knew it would be you who solved the riddle for me.’
‘Bugger off,’ Sledd said. He was exhausted. He knew the poet would not try to rob him and he hadn’t the strength to shout at this man.
‘When I want provant,’ the poet declaimed softly, still smiling, ‘with Humphrey I sup, and when benighted, I repose in Paul’s with waking souls, yet never am affrighted.’
‘All right,’ Sledd sighed, ‘you’re a bloody beggar, cadging meals at Duke Humphrey’s tomb and doing Paul’s walk. I know.’
‘You don’t know your arse from your elbow, Tom Sledd.’
Sledd blinked. ‘What?’ he said. The poet’s voice had changed, his eyes no longer rolled from time to time in his head. His gaze was level. And strangely familiar.
‘I could pull off the beard and cut my hair and put on my own Venetians and Colleyweston. Even show you Lord Burghley’s seal of office. And you still wouldn’t have a clue, would you?’
Realization dawned at last. ‘You’re …’ Sledd shouted, but the poet’s hand was across his mouth in a second.
‘Nicholas Faunt, late of Sir Francis Walsingham’s secret service, yes. Today, I work for Burghley, but it largely amounts to the same thing.’ He slowly let his hand drop and huddled closer to Sledd, not for warmth or comfort but so that his conversation could not be heard. ‘I can’t believe you didn’t recognize me. As soon as I saw you, I said to myself, “Bugger. It’s Tom Sledd and he’ll see through this stage makeup faster than Roland Sleford chains innocent people up.” But no, not you. How many adventures have we had together, one way or another, involving Kit Marlowe?’
‘Kit Marlowe!’ Sledd blurted out, then hissed, ‘the shit! He left me here to rot.’
‘He had no choice,’ Faunt mumbled. ‘He’d come to get you out, then he saw me. He recognized me at once.’
‘Well …’ Sledd shrugged, feeling stupid as well as exhausted and witless.
‘He realized I was here for a reason and couldn’t compromise my position.’
‘What reason?’ Sledd whispered. He was starting to feel a lot better now that a man of Nicholas Faunt’s standing was sitting beside him.
‘Your light-fingered friend over there,’ Faunt nodded in the man’s direction. ‘The fornicator.’
‘What about him?’
‘He’s a Jesuit. Name of Ballantine. He’s been on the run for weeks now and we got intelligence that he was hiding here. My problem was how to identify him, how to prove he was only mad nor’ by nor’west. He could have been anybody.’
‘Except me!’ Sledd pointed out, trying to keep his voice low and his brain from exploding. ‘You knew it couldn’t be me.’
‘Of course, but I couldn’t risk exposing myself even to get you out. I still can’t.’
‘What?’ Sledd grabbed the man by his rags. ‘What do you mean?’
‘One little slipped “Pax vobiscum” isn’t enough for the Secretary of State. And let’s face it, he hasn’t been behaving much like a Jesuit priest, has he? But now I know who he is, I can work on him. Just a day or so, Tom, and we’ll both walk out of here; I promise.’
Sledd hesitated. He wanted to hit Nicholas Faunt, over and over again. He wanted to strangle him with his own bare hands; but that way, he knew, he’d never leave Bedlam.
‘A day or two,’ he hissed. ‘No more.’
But the poet who was really a projectioner had already spotted Jack on his late morning rounds, traipsing in their direction. ‘I know more than Apollo,’ he told the gaoler. ‘For oft, when he lies sleeping, I see the stars at bloody wars in the wounded welkin weeping.’
Jack aimed a kick at Faunt’s genitals. ‘Of course you do, you mad bastard,’ he growled.
Inside the alehouse, it was soon apparent that, allowed or not, Gerard and ale were not bosom companions. He took a sip of the thin froth and blinked. ‘Strong,’ he said.
Marlowe had just been thinking that he might have to change to Rhenish rather than drink gutter water, but he persevered, so the lad felt at home in his company. He nodded his agreement. ‘I know we have only just met, Gerard,’ he said, putting down his goblet, ‘but you strike me as a rather unhappy young apprentice.’
Gerard shook his head vehemently. ‘I am very happy,’ he said. ‘The magus treats us well. The food is good. I will have a profession one day.’ It was the final sentence that held the harmony of doubt.
‘What profession?’ Marlowe took another sip, watching him over the rim of his goblet.
‘Healer,’ Gerard said, defiantly.
‘Healer. I see. And what will you heal? And how will you do it? You can’t wear a plague doctor’s mask for ever. The Pestilence will not stalk our streets for all of your life, you know. And what will you do then?’
‘There are other ills,’ Gerard said, a touch defiantly. ‘There are always women needing help, the magus says.’
Marlowe heard the doubt again and pounced on it. ‘Women? Just women?’
Gerard put down his drink so Marlowe could not see how his hand trembled. ‘Master Marlowe,’ he said. ‘Can I tell you something?’
‘Anything.’ Marlowe could extract the final secret from a clam.
‘I have begun to wonder … these last days … well, I have begun to wonder if the magus might be a sham.’
Marlowe was not much of an actor, but he could feign amazement and did so now. ‘A sham? The great Dr Forman? But the Queen …’
‘I know!’ Gerard lowered his voice and looked round to see if people were staring. ‘But I have … he has shared with me … things I don’t really want to tell you, Master Marlowe, if I may keep that secret. It is the way he … it’s the women, you see.’
Marlowe saw. He knew charlatans much worse than Forman, who used methods far more venal. But they made no bones about it. Ned Alleyn, for example, used his fame and other undeniable talents to ensnare any women who came into his orbit. But he and they knew what would happen and, when it all was over, there were no ill-feelings and in a good week he could double his theatre earnings and more. But Forman preyed on the scared and lonely, and that Marlowe could not abide.
‘Don’t worry, Gerard.’ He had seen the clandestine tear drop into the boy’s ale. ‘You don’t need to do what you don’t want to. I feel that you have healing in you. I could see when you were handing out the herbs that you really cared for those poor people. Stick to that, and you won’t go far wrong.’
‘I’ll never be rich, though,’ the lad wailed.
‘Money isn’t everything,’ Marlowe told him. ‘Being happy is worth more and is often harder to achieve. Just forget what he said to you. Put it from your mind and keep on with your work. I assume you learned your herbal lore from … who? Your mother?’
‘My grandame. She is a …’ Gerard had heard what the village called her, when they came one by one in the night to her back door, but he wasn’t going to use the ‘w’ word in front of a virtual stranger, famous though he might be.
Marlowe raised a hand. ‘I understand. Follow your grandame and you won’t be rich, but you will be happy. I guarantee it. But is there something else? You look happier already, but you still have something on your mind.’
Gerard felt a chill up his spine. This man could read his mind as well as any seer. For a terrifying minute, he wondered whether he came from Forman, or from Hell itself. But he was stepped in so far, it would be tedious now to go back, so he carried on. ‘We have a maidservant at the house. She hasn’t many brains, love her heart, but she means well. After the magus had given me his talk, he sent me to …’ His eyes welled up again.
‘Practise?’ Marlowe checked.
The apprentice nodded. ‘Don’t get me wrong, Master Marlowe. I am no innocent. We tend to make our own entertainment in the country. But I couldn’t do what the magus told me to do. Not to little Tabitha, anyway. So, we just talked. I told her not to tell anyone that we had just talked but she was happy to do that. She’s just a child and … well, we talked. And she told me that when the magus had told us he was out in the countryside, bringing healing to the people, he was at home, stinking in his bed, was what she said. Apart from Saturday night, when he went out in all his full finery and didn’t get back until late Sunday. He lied to us, Master Marlowe!’
Marlowe smiled and drained his goblet. ‘We all lie, all the time, Gerard,’ he said. ‘Have you never lied to Master Forman?’
The apprentice blushed.
‘You need to work on that,’ Marlowe said, waving a hand in front of the lad’s face, which burned all the brighter. ‘I’ll take it to mean that you have.’
‘We all did,’ he explained. ‘We were all out in the world, as the magus puts it, for a week. None of us did very well. I just camped out for a week. It was relaxing; I met a few nice people. I gave one boy a tincture for a toenail that was giving him pain. But I didn’t heal the dozens I claimed. Matthias just went home to mother. They live in a big house somewhere near London. Timothy did earn some money, but he lost it when his horse had a foal.’
Marlowe was sure there was a story there, but didn’t have time to hear it.
‘So yes, we lie. But we’re apprentices, Master Marlowe. We’re meant to lie.’
‘That’s an unusual view,’ Marlowe pointed out, ‘but not unique, I’m sure. We should be getting you back, however. Otherwise, you will be practising your lying skills once more.’
‘When you see the magus, Master Marlowe, you won’t tell him, will you? What we’ve been talking about?’
Marlowe clapped a hand over his mouth. ‘I am as silent as the grave,’ he promised. ‘Your master will learn nothing from me.’
‘Thank you. Let me take you to the magus, then.’
And the two walked up the lane, through the door, and towards the sanctum of Doctor Simon Forman, Magus to Her Majesty.
Forman was otherwise engaged. Mistress Forman was leaning on her fists on his desk and staring him down. He had actually based his famous basilisk stare on his wife, though he would go through Hell and high water before he admitted it.
‘But, Jeanie,’ he crooned, trying to calm her down.
‘Don’t “but Jeanie” me,’ she said. ‘I will not have you sending your boys to practise your vile arts on my Tabitha. She is a good girl, from the country; she doesn’t want truck with all that. Besides, I can’t get a minute’s work out of her today. She keeps bursting into hysterics.’
Forman looked outraged. ‘Who was the fellow?’ he roared. ‘Whoever it is will be sent from this house forthwith.’
‘Don’t give me your flannel,’ she said. ‘I didn’t come down with the last shower of frogs. It was Gerard. He is a dear boy and did nothing, as it happens. Tab might be a bit slow, but she knew what you had told him to do.’
‘Because she listens at doors!’ Forman had learned years ago that the best defence is attack.
‘So what if she does? I would know nothing of what you do if she never spent a few minutes at a keyhole now and again. But I’m telling you, Simon Forman …’
‘Simon Erasmus Hippocrates Forman,’ he corrected her.
‘What?’ This stopped her dead. ‘When did you get those names, may I ask?’
‘They came to me in a dream,’ he said, complacently.
She threw up her hands in resignation. ‘I give up,’ she said. ‘Don’t do it again.’
‘Don’t do what?’ he tried a winning smile.
‘Anything!’ And with that, she turned on her heel and threw open the door.
Gerard was standing there, with a complete stranger. He looked no better than he should be, clearly some lowlife crony of her lowlife husband. She hauled off and fetched Gerard a handy one upside the head.
Gerard clasped his ear and howled. ‘Ow! What was that for?’
But the woman had gone.
Forman stood up behind his desk and tried not to look like a man recently torn into metaphorical shreds by his wife. He gestured for Marlowe to come in and sit, then turned his attention to Gerard.
‘I’m sorry, my boy,’ he said, and Marlowe had never heard a voice as devoid of sorrow. ‘My wife is a little overwrought. Go and get one of the others to put a cold compress on that ear. I would suggest comfrey and knitbone.’
Gerard went off muttering, his head still singing. Mistress Forman had a strong right arm, sure enough, but she hadn’t broken anything in his head. It was his heart that was broken – his idol had feet of worse than clay and he had proved it with that stupid remedy. Gerard went straight to his bench, to find himself some self-heal and some camomile.
‘So, Master Marlowe,’ he said, trying to make it sound like a prognostication from on high, ‘it is Master Marlowe, isn’t it?’
‘As you well know, Master Forman.’ Marlowe bowed.
‘Doctor.’
There was possibly a joke there, but Marlowe wasn’t in the mood.
Forman waited for the correction, then gave up. ‘What is it you want, Master Marlowe? My time is precious.’
‘Hmm. As you say. My request is a simple one, Master Forman. I want you to go to Lord Burghley and recommend that the theatres are reopened.’
Forman goggled. ‘A simple request, you say?’
‘Indeed. I have reason enough to believe that Burghley regrets the closure. It has caused one riot already and more will follow. You just need to say that when you said the theatres should be closed, you misspoke.’
Forman leaned forward, his eyes icy. It was a look which had quelled many a lesser man. ‘I never misspeak.’
‘Again, as you say. But I will not take no for an answer, Master Forman. If you do not do as I say, I will use my not-inconsiderable influence in high places to ensure that the many husbands you have cuckolded find out precisely why their wives will only consent to Master Forman doctoring at their bedside.’
Forman might have been made of stone.
‘Does that sound like something a husband would want to hear?’ Marlowe went on. ‘I can think of several who would run you through first and ask questions later. Sir George Stafford, for example, has been known to knock a groom unconscious because he touched his wife’s knee as she was mounting her horse. So you can see how they might misunderstand what you touch when mounting their wives.’
Forman slammed his fist down on the table top. ‘I will go to Lord Burghley,’ he said, through gritted teeth. ‘But if the entire populace of London dies of the Pestilence, be it on your head.’
Marlowe shrugged and got up. ‘As I am one of the populace of London, Master Forman, I doubt I would be in a position to care,’ he said. ‘But I will bear it in mind.’
Forman stood and went to a hook behind the door. He swung his gorgeous cape around his shoulders and barged past Marlowe. ‘No time like the present,’ he muttered, and slammed his way through the laboratory and out into the street.
‘What’s the matter with him?’ Matthias asked, with no interest in the answer.
‘I think your master has seen a door opening which will give him the result he wants with no loss of face,’ Marlowe said, coming through from the sanctum. ‘In other words, the theatres open, London alive again and foolish women flocking to his door. It should please you, too. You won’t be sent out to earn your bread again for a while.’
Matthias was sorry – his letters, translated with some aplomb by Timothy, had made him long for his French governess even more. Timothy, hard at work among his retorts, looked up briefly. ‘Master Marlowe,’ he said. ‘Timothy.’ He bowed from the neck. ‘I am pleased to make your acquaintance. Your plays have brought us much pleasure.’
‘Thank you, Timothy. And your friend?’
‘Matthias. You are quite right, we were beginning to notice short rations. Thank you for making our master see sense.’
‘That’s not easy,’ muttered Gerard through the poultice on his head.
‘It has been a pleasure to meet you all,’ Marlowe said with an all-encompassing bow and swept from the room, more elegantly than Forman could ever manage and with a good deal less noise. The apprentices heard an excited twittering in the hall as he made his goodbyes to Mistress Forman. Christopher Marlowe was very good at exiting stage right, left or centre.