Midday. Spring was being kind and there was real warmth in the sun that said that summer was not far behind. Marlowe sat in the window seat at his house in Hog Lane, looking out on to the tiny patch of trimmed box that he presumed to call a garden. Agnes had spread some linen out to dry on the hedges and the smell of lavender and lye crept in through the casement, which was open just the merest crack. A bird was singing its heart out in a tree on the edge of the garden and Marlowe closed his eyes to listen to it more closely. He had been brought up to the sound of birdsong, but he was ashamed to say that he had no idea which bird it was that was pouring liquid gold from its throat into the warm air. He leaned his head back on the transom and let his mind drift. He tried to remember the last time he had been here, at peace, in his own house, with nothing but silence and birdsong to surround him. The sounds of the road outside swam in and out of his consciousness until they had gone altogether. Then the bird. Then … he slept.
‘Kit! Kit! Wake up!’
He woke with a jerk that told him he had not been asleep for long. His head bumped on the window, his foot had gone to sleep and there was a face he knew inches from his, hissing at him. He focused on the large, worried eyes, the mole like a third eye on the forehead.
‘Lord Strange,’ he blurred through dry lips. ‘How can I help you?’
‘Kit, where have you been? I’ve been here twice already trying to find you.’
‘Oh, around. About. The Tower. The Rose. All the usual places, thorough brush, thorough briar.’ He suddenly realized the import of Strange’s presence in his room. ‘Have you news for me? The poison?’
‘Yes!’ Lord Stanley was triumphant and waved a small wad of parchment in the air in front of Marlowe’s eyes. ‘Here it is, by fast horse from Derby.’
Marlowe reached for it, but the other man snatched it away.
‘Not so fast, Master Marlowe. I need to explain first. My man – who, as I have told you, I entrust with all my food testing – is by name one Silas Beaucheek. He is a chemist of some local repute, but you will not have heard of him here in London, I am sure. He had little to go on, so has had to cut some corners. As a general rule, if he finds a noxious substance, he makes sure of his diagnosis by feeding it to mice, rats and so on.’
Marlowe thought of Salazar and shivered.
‘But with so little, he has come to his conclusion by chemical means only. So,’ he stepped back as Marlowe made another lunge for the paper, ‘you must bear that in mind. This is almost certainly correct, but Silas refuses to say it is definitely so. He says I am not to tell you unless you agree with that proviso. He brought the news himself, although he is not accustomed to riding so far and so fast. It has made him a little testy, but his reports are always accurate, I stake my life on it.’
‘Give me the paper,’ Marlowe said, through clenched teeth.
‘Do you agree?’ Strange insisted.
‘Yes, yes, I agree.’ Marlowe looked very young, with sleep still filling his eyes and anticipation transfiguring his face. ‘So, give me the paper.’
With a smile, Strange handed it over and watched as Marlowe unwrapped it.
‘Latin. Impressive. Let me see … hmm …’ Marlowe looked up and met Strange’s eyes, watching him for his reaction. ‘More than one agent?’
The man nodded. ‘Cunning devil, don’t you think?’
‘Cunning. Evil. It doesn’t really matter which. One of these I recognize of course. The other … wait a minute and it will come to me.’
Ferdinando Strange was hopping up and down with the stress of it all. He shook Marlowe by the arm. ‘Come man, surely. It is obvious.’ He pursed his lips and mimed with Marlowe the syllables of the Latin name. ‘Still nothing? Kit, you disappoint me.’
‘Solanum. Solanum. That’s deadly nightshade, isn’t it?’
‘Oh, so close!’ Strange had now clasped his hands under his chin and the knuckles were showing white with the effort of not blurting out the answer. ‘It is the same family, though you wouldn’t think that at first. It has to come into flower to see the similarity.’
‘Into flower. So, it doesn’t usually flower?’ Marlowe could feel the answer tantalizing him at the tip of his tongue. ‘So … not a garden plant. Is it …’ the light dawned in his eye. ‘Can that be right? Potato?’
Strange clapped his hands. ‘Yes! Potato.’ He suddenly looked very solemn. ‘I said to Silas, were they safe to eat? I do sometimes have them on my table though, truth to tell, I don’t find them very tasty. He told me that treated properly, they were harmless, but if allowed to become green, to mature if you will, they can be deadly. And, of course, like their cousin belladonna, the berries are poisonous, although in the normal way of cultivation, the plant is destroyed long before that stage, to get at the tubers.’
‘And the poison is easy to extract?’
‘It doesn’t need extraction in the accepted sense, although Silas says that the dregs contained a concentrate. The other agent, the nicotine, is simply won, of course, from the dottle of a pipe. All it would need for the poisoner to extract it would be for him to drink smoke for a day or so and then empty the tar from the pipe. A good pipeful could kill a roomful of lusty men in minutes.’
‘But Sir Francis lingered,’ Marlowe pointed out.
‘Indeed. I asked Silas about that and he said he couldn’t be sure, of course, that these were the only two poisons used. It could be that many were employed, in minute doses such as we have here, all having a cumulative effect. In a man old and tired like Sir Francis, eventually they would take their lethal toll.’
‘Isn’t that all a little … inexact, though?’ Marlowe pondered. ‘Poisoners usually look for the quick result. Especially if it is to stop someone’s mouth.’
‘True.’ Strange was an expert on the ways of the poisoner, since he saw one lurking behind every tree, behind every arras. ‘But there are other reasons for poisoning someone. Hatred. Wickedness.’
‘True.’ Marlowe sighed. ‘Thank Master Beaucheek for me. It has both answered a question and posed many more.’ He smiled as he heard Agnes come back from marketing, slamming the door behind her and humming as she came. ‘Would you like to share a platter with me? Freshly marketed.’
Strange looked askance. ‘Potato?’
‘By no means.’
‘Do you drink smoke?’
‘Rarely.’
Strange smiled. ‘Then I should be delighted!’
A small fire crackled in the centre of the half-circle created by the tall-backed chairs. There were seven of them, their backs upright and carved with the rampant lions of John Dee’s family. The magus had been dreading this for days, ever since Marlowe had first suggested it. He had every faith in the Muses’ darling, Machiavel, who moved in ways as mysterious as his own, but this … all the men who were about to fill these chairs were his friends; more, they were the finest, most inquisitive minds in Europe, perhaps the world. No good could come of an evening like this, but the Queen’s magus knew in his heart of hearts that he had caused it. It might be Marlowe’s finger that would point accusingly in the next hour, but it was Dee’s suggestion that had prompted it.
Hariot arrived first, his bright eyes glittering in the broad face, his hair thin and lank under the scholar’s cap. He carried a satchel with him that Dee knew was full of scribbled numbers, written forward and back in a mad symmetry that only he understood. Percy was next, dusty from the Sussex roads around Petworth. There was a love poem beating out a refrain in his head and the face of a girl he had just met floated tantalizingly in his vision. He loved her voice, though he had heard it but fleetingly and it drowned out the inane babblings of Hariot and the hostly mumblings of John Dee. Ferdinando Stanley had been at his town house when the doctor’s letter had arrived; these meetings were becoming very regular, but Strange knew that Dee never called them lightly. There was always method in his madness. Ralegh swept in in his glittering finery, jewels at his throat and in his earlobes. He had left his sword at Durham House but the dagger was never far away, should his honour be slighted. ‘Urgent’, the doctor’s message had said: that was good enough for him.
‘I don’t wish to be rude, John,’ Hariot said as they all took their places, ‘but why are we here?’
Dee glanced out of the window. Night had well and truly fallen and his own reflection wobbled back at him through the latticed panes. ‘Well …’
There was a crash and the door flew open, Barnaby Salazar scurrying through it. ‘Sorry I’m late, dears.’
Ralegh muttered to Strange, ‘I do wish he wouldn’t call us that. It’s so …’
‘Overseas?’ suggested Strange.
‘Bit of a disaster on the domestic front.’ Salazar was hauling off his cap and cloak, throwing them to one of Dee’s minions. ‘Old Jorge died tonight.’
‘Who?’ Ralegh thought he had to ask.
‘Jorge, my steward,’ Salazar took the hot toddy another minion offered him and quaffed it back. ‘Ah, nectar. Thank you, John. Just what the doctor ordered, eh? I must admit, it came as something of a shock. Oh, he wasn’t in the first flush, I’ll grant you that, but when a man you have known almost all your life just dwindles and is dead in days, it hits hard. Mistress Jorge is distraught, of course.’
‘Mistress Jorge?’ Strange frowned. ‘Doesn’t she have a name?’
‘Oh, I expect so.’ Salazar caught Strange’s disapproving look. ‘Oh, come on, now, Ferdinando. You and I are too busy peering into the secrets of the universe to keep track of our servants’ names. So, John,’ he took a vacant chair, ‘what’s the order of business?’
Dee cleared his throat and looked around them all. The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end as he remembered that one of them might be a murderer. ‘The order of business, gentlemen,’ he said, in the rich, powerful voice that often silenced the Queen’s court: ‘Allow me to introduce …’ and he clapped his hands. Another door opened and two men strode into the room – Kit Marlowe and his man, Carter.
‘What’s the meaning of this?’ Ralegh asked first, but it was a question on everyone’s lips.
Dee sighed and crept towards a chair. ‘I’ll let Master Marlowe explain.’
Marlowe’s genius had filled stages before and his words daily held hundreds in their power. But he had rarely been at the centre of the wooden O himself. Not that this was a baldactum play. This would be a performance like no other. ‘Thank you, lords and gentlemen, for coming tonight and at such short notice. I’ll not detain you long. Your Grace,’ he turned to Percy, ‘how do you know me?’
Percy frowned. ‘You are the Muses’ darling,’ he said. ‘The most famous playwright and poet in England.’
‘But, specifically,’ Marlowe said. ‘How did we meet?’
‘Er … you came as a friend of my librarian, Michael Johns, as I understood it to see my books.’
‘Sir Walter?’ Marlowe turned to him.
‘You wanted to talk poetry. As you know, I dabble.’ That was it. Clearly, Ralegh had no intention of mentioning a duel fought over the honour of Bess Throckmorton.
‘Master Hariot?’
‘Um … you were looking for a character for a new play, a philosopher. I was flattered, of course …’
‘Master Salazar?’
‘Damned if I know,’ the man shrugged. ‘Unless it was to sample my country’s culinary delights.’
‘What of me, Kit?’ Strange asked. ‘After all, I was just a guest of Hariot’s. Why am I here tonight?’
‘Patience, my lord,’ Marlowe said. ‘Hell is empty and all the devils are here. Gentlemen,’ he turned to face them all, ‘I have been less than truthful. The Earl of Northumberland was kind enough to call me the most famous playwright in England, but tonight I wear another hat.’
The only sound in the room was the occasional crack of a log or a crumble of shifting ash.
‘I am what is commonly called a projectioner and I work for Francis Walsingham.’
Only the fire responded while they all looked at each other. Only Dee was unsurprised.
‘So,’ Ralegh, as usual, spoke first. ‘You will know that the doctor here has asked us to bend our minds to that, the assumption being that Walsingham was murdered.’
‘That is not an assumption, Sir Walter, that is now a fact. Lord Strange’s chemist, a man well versed in finding out poisons in small samples, has isolated the source of the Spymaster’s last illness, in the dregs of his cup, though he suspects that the poison had been administered at least twice before the fatal dose. This was no accident. Although the agents can be made from easily obtainable ingredients, it cannot be a normal constituent of any food. No – Sir Francis was deliberately done to death.’
A ripple of astonishment ran around the room. Those who still held goblets pushed them away. It was Strange who articulated what they were all feeling. ‘Kit,’ he said softly. ‘You have your man here with you. Before we go further, I should like to invite mine to this presence. I’d feel more comfortable were he at my back.’
‘I’d echo that,’ Percy said, suddenly feeling uneasy.
‘Marlowe?’ Dee looked at the man.
‘Very well,’ he said. ‘I have no objection.’
‘Carter,’ Dee said. ‘Go to the kitchen, will you and bring these gentlemen’s people? Although,’ he waited until Carter had gone, ‘I am not sure we need witnesses to this.’
‘Oh, I am sure we do,’ Hariot said and sat back, folding his arms.
‘Seven chairs,’ Percy said, looking around the room. ‘And six of us. Who is the seventh for? You, Marlowe?’
‘No, Your Grace,’ Marlowe said solemnly. ‘Call it a theatrical fancy of mine. In the next few moments, the seventh seat will be occupied by Francis Walsingham’s murderer.’
The uproar threatened to drown out Marlowe’s voice and he waited until Carter came back with the others, liveried servants, the loyal and true who fetched and carried for the great and good in that room. When the hubbub had died down, Marlowe faced them all, standing behind the seventh chair. Each of the seated gentlemen had his servant standing behind him, Carter taking his rightful place behind Dee.
‘You are the School of Night,’ Marlowe began.
‘How the Devil—?’ but Ralegh never finished his sentence.
‘I told you, Sir Walter,’ Marlowe cut in. ‘I am a projectioner. How did I know about the School of Night? You gave the name, Dr Dee the essence. And anyway, it’s my job to know. One of you in this room killed the Queen’s Spymaster. I intend to find out who.’
‘I’ve had enough of this,’ Salazar said, already on his feet, his manservant stepping back to let him pass.
‘Stay where you are, sir!’ Dee bellowed. No one was going to break the half-circle tonight. Salazar slunk back to his chair and his man took up his position behind him, hands folded lightly together in the small of his back, eyes fixed on an indeterminate point near the ceiling.
‘John Dee,’ Marlowe said, turning to face him. ‘The Queen’s magus. I know your powers, Dr Dee. I have seen them myself. You twist men’s minds, tie their tongues and throw magic dust in their eyes. Smoke and mirrors? Maybe. But my man Tom Sledd at the Rose can do as much, with light and sound. No, your magic is real and a blacker art never existed. If anyone could slip poison into Walsingham’s drink or his food, it is you.’
Dee could hardly believe what he was hearing. Marlowe had asked him to set up this meeting and he had told him why. One of the others had killed Walsingham, not the magus himself. How dare he? ‘What was my motive?’ Dee asked archly, sitting upright and feeling Carter stiffen behind him.
Marlowe’s dark eyes flashed fire briefly and he smiled. He clapped his hands once, twice, a flutter. ‘Bravo, Doctor,’ he said. ‘A sharper mind never graced England. You are the Queen’s magus. Walsingham was the Queen’s Spymaster. You both worship the same woman. There would be no gain in murdering a fellow patriot.’
‘What of me?’ Ralegh asked. ‘I worship the Queen too.’
Marlowe turned to him. ‘Indeed you do, Sir Walter,’ he said. ‘All you have is because of her and you have been known to lie like a dog outside her chamber in your pretty armour, keeping her safe.’
Ralegh shrugged. ‘It was my pleasure,’ he said.
‘Unfortunately, as I have all too much reason to know, Bess Throckmorton is your pleasure too, isn’t she?’
Ralegh turned crimson, but said nothing.
‘And if the Queen were to find out, your days would not be long in the land. There would be no more expeditions to the New World, no more fat profits from your estates, no more openings at court, if I may use that term in the circumstances.’
Strange let out a laugh. ‘Back to Bess Throckmorton again,’ he said, under his breath. He acknowledged Marlowe as a true genius with words, yet again.
Ralegh was on his feet, his dagger glinting in his hand. ‘You’ll take that back, Strange,’ he said, gravel in his voice.
‘Walter!’ Dee chided. ‘Not now, for God’s sake. Sit down.’
‘I don’t think God interests Sir Walter very much,’ Marlowe said, ‘because he doesn’t believe there is a God.’
A sudden silence filled the room, chill despite the fire. Both Strange and his man crossed themselves. Ralegh’s dagger tip pointed to Marlowe. ‘I thought it was you who dared God out of His Heaven,’ he said. ‘“Moses was but a conjuror and John the Baptist was a bedfellow to Jesus.” I am quoting you there, Marlowe, am I not?’
The playwright-projectioner smiled. ‘I have often been misquoted, Sir Walter,’ he said.
‘Ralegh.’ Dee’s voice was full of command and the privateer who listened to no one did as he had been told and sat down.
‘Why would you kill Walsingham?’ Marlowe was like a terrier with a rat in its jaws. ‘Because if I know about Bess Throckmorton, I’m damned sure the Spymaster did. Dead men tell no tales, do they? And you visited Walsingham on the day he died.’
‘This is nonsense, Marlowe,’ Percy said. ‘You can’t just accuse people like this. Some of us are peers of the realm.’
‘Peers of the realm,’ Marlowe took up the theme, ‘who rebel against the Queen.’
‘C-careful, Marlowe.’ Percy wagged a finger. He was a poet and a dreamer, but he was also a man of honour and the Percys had a long history. His old stammer had come back with the tension of it all.
‘Your father hated Lord Burghley,’ Marlowe did not need to remind the company, ‘and wanted to return the church – how did the minutes of the Privy Council have it – “to the time of the late King Henry”? In that King’s time, men who did not accept the monarch as governor of the church went to the block. Your family lands have been cut to what you must regard as penury. How many tenant estates did you have in the North? Two hundred? Three hundred?’ He leaned nearer to the wizard earl. ‘What better way to hamper the Jezebel of England than to cut off Walsingham, her right hand? I doubt the Queen’s imp spends many nights of sweet slumber with you on the prowl.’
‘Are you including me in this, Kit?’ Strange asked. He alone of the School of Night had ridden the roads with Marlowe. Lord Strange’s Men were travelling actors and Marlowe had, briefly, travelled with them. The poet turned to the nobleman, sadly, inevitably. He was so far steeped in accusations now, he could never turn back.
‘Poisons, my lord, the ways of the hedgerows,’ he said. ‘Who in this room knows more of their properties than you? Lord Percy may think he has a knowledge, but compared to yours, he knows nothing. You come from a family of Northern earls and – for this alone – Master Topcliffe would rack you and Francis Walsingham would have had you hanged, drawn and quartered – you follow Rome.’
There was another silence, but Strange was unruffled. ‘I found the poisons for you,’ he said. ‘My man Beaucheek …’
‘… Is, for all I know, a figment of your imagination. Are you taunting me with your superior knowledge, or have you given me the wrong agents altogether?’
‘You forget to point out that I fear witches, Kit,’ Strange said.
‘As King of England, you need fear no toothless crone, my lord. Just take care that your imp can be trusted.’
‘King of England?’ Hariot spoke for the first time. ‘Did I miss something?’
‘You can’t hide behind your screen of numbers for ever, Master Hariot, or your gibberish tongues from the savages of the West. If Lord Strange here were so disposed, he could assume the mantle of leader of a good many discontented lords – the wizard earl here among them.’
‘A revolution?’ Hariot blinked. ‘Overthrowing the Queen?’
‘It wouldn’t be the first time,’ Marlowe pointed out.
‘What of me, then?’ Hariot persisted. ‘If you have convinced yourself that Walsingham was murdered as part of a rebellion against the Queen, how do I fit in?’
Marlowe smiled. ‘Count the chairs, mathematician. How many do you see?’
‘Seven.’ Hariot didn’t have to look.
‘Seven.’ Marlowe nodded. ‘The number of the planets in the sky. Except that you see more, don’t you?’
‘I beg your pardon?’ Hariot was flustered. For a moment he thought his heart had stopped.
‘Your perspective trunk, the one you hide so carefully in your laboratory. It magnifies the Heavens, doesn’t it? Shows you stars that the rest of us have never dreamed of. Tell me, Master Hariot, you have built machines to navigate at sea, could you build a craft that could reach the moon?’
‘Don’t be ridiculous, Marlowe!’ Hariot snapped. ‘That’s impossible.’
‘Ah, but the trying of it,’ Marlowe beamed. ‘The challenge. That’s what moves you, isn’t it? What sets your blood racing. Could it be done? Could you find a way of getting past the most careful, best-protected man in England and kill him secretly, to the extent that most men would say he died of natural causes? That’s something you couldn’t resist, could you? All it would take is a nod from Percy here, or Strange or Ralegh. You’re just a cog, a mere factotum.’
‘I’ve heard enough.’ Ralegh was on his feet and making for the door, his man behind him. ‘John,’ he paused at the door. ‘Next time you call a meeting, I want your word that this upstart won’t be involved. And as for you, Marlowe,’ he turned to face his accuser, ‘I’m letting you live tonight because I owe you a debt of honour. I consider that debt collected. Should we meet again, it will go ill with you.’
‘I owe you nothing, Marlowe.’ Percy was following Ralegh to the door, his man in tow. ‘C-consider my warning the same as Sir Walter’s.’ And he left.
Ferdinando Strange was next. He closed to Marlowe. ‘There’ll be no more Lord Strange’s Men, Kit, not for you. It’ll be hard, but I’ll find another playwright from somewhere. And I daresay he will do.’
Hariot left without a word, anxious to get home to move his machinery to somewhere safe before the world got to hear of it. Salazar had already gone, slipping out silently in Ralegh’s turbulent wake. In the end, only three of them stood there – Carter, Marlowe and Dee.
‘I fear you’ve made some enemies tonight, Kit,’ the magus said sadly, staring into the fire’s dying embers.
‘And lost some friends,’ Marlowe said. ‘And for what?’ He threw his arms wide. ‘I really thought it would work, that I would twist their nerves to such a height that one of them would give something away.’
Dee shook his head. ‘I didn’t want to pour cold water on it,’ he said. ‘I want Walsingham’s murderer caught as much as you do. But a projectioner standing in a room accusing suspects of murder and expecting a result? There’s no science in that. And no magic, either. Carter, go with Master Marlowe and watch his back. There are lessons taught by the School of Night it is better none of us experience.’
‘I’m sorry, Dr Dee,’ Marlowe said. ‘Not just for wasting your time, but for the things I said. I’ll make it up to you, I promise.’
Dee smiled and nodded sadly, shaking the man’s hand as he left. With Carter close behind him, Marlowe made for the stairs and the door. The night was old now and the gentleman’s carriages had gone. All except one. Its owner sat inside, his feet on the step, the door open.
‘You didn’t get round to me, Master Marlowe,’ Salazar said.
‘Time ran out,’ Marlowe said, ‘along with Ralegh and the rest.’
‘So you don’t want to talk to me, then?’
Marlowe looked up at Salazar’s man on his perch, the reins slack in his hands. ‘There seems little point now,’ he said and started walking, Carter at his elbow.
‘That’s a shame,’ Salazar said, raising his voice so Marlowe should miss nothing. ‘Because there is one man in this great country of ours who can solve this little conundrum of yours.’
Marlowe stopped and half turned. ‘Oh, who’s that?’
‘Walsingham.’ Salazar got up and climbed fully into the carriage, turning and patting the seat beside him. ‘Francis Walsingham. Come and see.’
Marlowe hesitated and Carter leaned forward and whispered in his ear. ‘Wait here – I will fetch the doctor. This sounds like something he would want to witness.’
Marlowe nodded and put one foot up on the step of the carriage, keeping the other firmly planted on the cobbles. ‘Walsingham?’ he said. ‘How can he help us now? His body lies in Paul’s.’
A wild light came into Salazar’s eye and he dropped his voice to a whisper. ‘Do not speak of it, Master Marlowe. The spirits are everywhere. If he gets wind of it – he may not come.’
‘I see.’ Marlowe had seen many things he could not explain, but somehow he found it hard to imagine a spectral Walsingham floating above his head, listening in. When he had been alive, he had had people for that; there was no reason to suppose anything would have changed now. ‘Master Salazar, I must be honest with you. Carter has gone back to fetch Doctor Dee.’
Salazar looked mutinous. ‘The Queen’s magus. I do not know whether the spirits will come with him there.’
Marlowe laughed. ‘But the doctor raises spirits as a matter of course.’
‘Yes,’ Salazar agreed with a sneer. ‘But his methods … I spit on them.’
‘If you must,’ a voice said from the doorway suddenly open behind Marlowe, spilling light into the street. ‘I did hear tell that … bodily fluids are an important part of your rituals, Master Salazar. And, of course, if that works for you, who am I to gainsay it?’ Dee pushed Marlowe into the carriage from behind. ‘Budge up, Kit. There is room for one more inside. Carter,’ he spoke over his shoulder, ‘stay here and watch the house for me. I feel uneasy tonight, I don’t know quite why.’ He gave Salazar a dazzling smile from the depths of his wispy beard. ‘A goose stepping on my grave, perhaps.’
‘Perhaps.’ Salazar was clearly not happy to have the magus in the company, but there was little he could do. He settled back in the now rather cramped seat and rapped on the roof of the carriage with his cane. With a lurch, they were on their way.
Carter stood with his back to the door and watched them go, rattling along the Cheap. He had been Dee’s right-hand man ever since he had entered his service in Prague. It seemed a lifetime ago and yet, in other ways, just yesterday. Marlowe he could take or leave, but Dee he would take care of until his last breath. He turned to go in, torn between obedience and the call of his heart, to find the door open and Jane Dee standing there, in nightgown and shawl, clutching the woollen wrap close around her.
‘Elias.’
‘Mistress.’
‘Was that the master? Where has he gone?’
‘I don’t know, Mistress. With Master Salazar and Master Marlowe.’
‘And you are still here because …?’
‘Because I was told to look after the house, Mistress. You and the house.’
Jane pushed him out of the door. ‘For the love of God, Elias,’ she said. ‘Don’t do as the master tells you. Keep him safe. That’s what we pay you for, isn’t it? This road is straight for a good half-mile, with no turnings that a carriage could take. If you run, you’ll catch them easily.’
Carter stood looking down at her upturned face, angry, worried.
‘Don’t just stand there, idiot man. Run!’
And Carter ran. For his life and the life of Doctor John Dee.
Marlowe attempted some small talk in the crowded carriage. He had no idea where they were going or how long it would take and the animosity between the two other men threatened to poison the air.
‘I was sorry to hear of Jorge’s … passing.’ He knew how careful he would have to be with the choice of words. Salazar was probably not comfortable with death as a concept, as he considered it at best temporary, at worst a minor inconvenience.
‘Thank you,’ Salazar said, automatically. ‘I shall miss him. In fact, Master Marlowe, it may interest you to know that you were the last person to enjoy his famous pastel de nata. Their like will not be seen or tasted again.’
Marlowe smiled reminiscently. ‘They were delicious,’ he said. ‘A local speciality, I assume?’
‘Of Sendmarsh?’ Dee was surprised. ‘Does Sendmarsh have a cuisine of its own?’
‘No,’ Salazar was testy. ‘Portugal. My homeland and Jorge’s. Mistress Jorge is English and doesn’t have the skill. The secret is in …’ he laughed. ‘But like so many secrets, to tell it is to make it secret no longer.’ He smiled sadly. ‘Poor Jorge. He did love his pastel.’ He sighed and his chin dropped on to his chest.
Jorge’s death seemed to colour the air in the carriage and the men were silent until the horses were pulled in with a jerk and the driver banged on the roof. ‘We’re here,’ they heard him call.
Salazar was annoyed. ‘When will that man learn what the word “quiet” means? He may as well have banged a drum. However, hopefully no harm done. Out you get, gentlemen, but …’ he put a finger to his lips, ‘no more noise, if you please.’
They stepped out into almost total darkness. The man on the box was putting out the carriage lights and there were no buildings nearby showing so much as a candle. As their eyes adjusted, they saw the bulk of something huge and tall looming between them and the stars, but there was no obvious sign to show them where they were.
Carter, coming up behind them, saw the lights go out and heard his master say, ‘Where in the name of God are we, Salazar? You can’t just take us where you will without letting us know.’
‘Ssh,’ Salazar hissed. Carter crouched low and kept silent. ‘We are at St Barnabas’ Church,’ he said. ‘A small conceit, being so near to my own name, that is all. The location scarcely matters. But now we are here, please follow me, gentlemen.’ He reached behind him into the carriage and pulled a small bag from under the seat. ‘But, don’t forget. Silence. From now on, not a word.’
Marlowe and Dee exchanged glances in the dark, the gleam of starlight shining on an eye being their only contact. Salazar squeezed past and went round the side of the building, with the sure step of practice. Marlowe and Dee followed, the poet with his hand outstretched, the magus hanging on to his sleeve. Feeling each pace with a tapping toe, they found their way around the corner and Salazar was nowhere to be seen.
‘Down here!’ A voice hissed from near their feet. ‘Take care. There is a rail, but it is loose. Come down. I can light a candle then.’
Marlowe went first, one foot at a time and after eight uneven, crumbling steps, found himself in an underground room, a large one from the feel of the air, a crypt by its smell. Dee joined him, stumbling a little on the last step and uttering a smothered oath.
‘Doctor!’ Salazar was angry now. ‘Silence. Silence, though Hell itself should yawn in your face. There is too much at stake to lose it all for the sake of a stubbed toe.’
There was silence for a while as Salazar rummaged in his bag, finally there was the scrape of a flint and a candle flame grew steadily to light their surroundings.
The crypt was low and wide, with coffins piled up on all sides. In the middle was a stone tomb, with one side gaping and on it Salazar had rested the candle, which was, as Marlowe had half expected, made of black wax. Without speaking, Salazar motioned Marlowe to stand at one corner of the tomb, Dee to the other, so that the three of them made a narrow triangle, with Salazar at the apex. Muttering under his breath, he laid out his requirements, touching some to his lips, some to his heart and some, again not unexpectedly, to a part of himself below the tomb. Dee risked a glance at Marlowe and was reassured by the cynical gleam in the playwright’s eye.
Carter, crouched on the top step, out of the candle’s gleam, bent down to see what he could. He thought that, in extremis, he would be able to save his master. Marlowe was young enough and fit enough to stir for himself.
The muttering went on and Dee began to feel the cold from the dirt floor seeping through his shoes. He had not changed into boots before he came out; if Jane ever discovered that he had come out in his house shoes, there would be the Devil to pay. As this domestic detail went through Dee’s mind, he could hardly suppress a smile. If he could keep this link with reality strong, he and Marlowe may well survive this night. This idiot in front of him, posturing with his bell, book, candle and whatever else he had brought with him, could kill them all. Dee would be the first to admit that most of what he did was mere charlatanry, but that small, small iota that was not; it needed a man stronger than Salazar to contain it, that he knew. And he could hear the air thick with the chittering of beings locked too long out of the world of men. If a door was opened … Dee closed his eyes and thought of Jane, of Madimi and of his poor old, cold feet. It would keep him in the here and now. Jane. Madimi. Feet. He chanted it under his breath and the chittering grew quieter, though it didn’t go away.
Marlowe watched Salazar with less trepidation. Despite the light from under his chin giving his face shadows that did not belong there, turning his eyes into fathomless holes and his mouth into the entrance to Hell, Marlowe could still see the genial host, dispensing cakes and wine. The rituals he was muttering his way through clearly meant a lot to him; his concentration was deep and total. He bowed, kissed, patted and postured with his salt and his wine and his stolen bits of the Host. If belief could raise the dead, Francis Walsingham would be walking in any minute; but there had to be more than belief, surely, or every beggar would ride.
The candle guttered and Salazar’s mutterings grew in volume and coherence. He flung some salt into the air and momentarily the flame flared blue. Dee smiled to himself. Simple chemistry and one of his favourite effects for the naïve; this time, perhaps more aptly, from the naïve. Surely, Salazar could not think that they would be impressed by such simple hedge magic?
With a dramatic gesture, Salazar shot back his sleeve and exposed his forearm, livid white in the candlelight. He picked up a horn-handled knife from the table and passed it through the flame, dipped it in the salt and then the wine. As Marlowe and Dee held their breath, he dragged the tip slowly across his arm, splitting the old scars which lay there like some macabre spider’s web against the skin. The blood welled like rubies deep in a mine, showing themselves in the light of a miner’s lamp and coalesced to form a black mirror on the magician’s arm. Dee smiled again and nodded his approval. A ring of oil on the arm would hold the blood; a clever trick, but not one he himself employed. He had no love for knives nor wish for scars.
Salazar bent at the knees and brought his arm down straight on to the top of the tomb, the obscene mirror bellying and shimmering with the movement. Salazar muttered some more, then his voice came high-pitched and insistent. Dee looked up, his eyes fluttering over the dark ceiling. Marlowe saw the movement and risked a glance to his right. The magus was watching something that the playwright could not see and he held out his hand to the old man, who took it in an iron grip. The buzzing ceased and he looked back at Salazar, but closed his ears to what he was intoning.
Marlowe listened, aware of the touch of his friend on his right hand, the harsh stone beneath the palm of his left, where he pressed down. Salazar was shrieking now, in a voice higher than any human should be able to reach. It was the sound of a knife on a whetstone, of a wet finger down glass, of a nail on a slate. It pierced the ear and went straight to the hairs on the back of the neck. There was no breath in it, just a cry to the Heavens and what they had shielded behind the stars.
At the point where the cry became all but unbearable, it stopped. With a sob, Salazar bent down and sucked up the globe of blood into his mouth and, raising his head, blew a red mist into the air. Marlowe and Dee stepped back a pace in unison, not breaking their grip. On his stair, Carter poised to strike.
In the air, a face that Marlowe and Dee knew well hung, looking sadly at them. The eyes opened, looked beyond them into nothing and then the whole thing faded away. Salazar cried out once more and slumped to the tomb’s top in a swoon. The silence after the screaming was palpable, broken after a few seconds by Carter’s thundering feet on the stair.
‘What was that, Master?’ he asked, uncertain of his voice.
‘That?’ Dee said, in a voice not quite his own. ‘Magic, Elias. Just a bit of magic.’
And, leaving Salazar slumped where he had fallen, they felt their way up the stairs.