Black Death Read online

  ‘Don’t be afraid, I have completely reconsidered the ingredients and I think you will find it very palatable.’

  Marlowe looked askance. ‘Does it still have asafoetida in it?’ he asked, dubiously.

  ‘Not a grain. Jane hates it as well, though I confess I don’t see why. I have replaced the asafoetida with mint, the rue with rosemary, the bitter fescue with clover and with a few other changes I think you will enjoy it. Keeping with the countryside flavour, it is topped up with mead.’ He stood and wrapped a cloth around his hand to pick up the kettle. ‘Do try it. You’ll like it.’

  ‘Well, I will try just a small cup,’ Marlowe agreed. It certainly sounded nicer than the original recipe.

  ‘While I prepare it, tell me your conundrum.’

  ‘It is several conundra, really, but I will start with the first and main one. As you know, I have been investigating the death of Robert Greene …’

  ‘Have you found the miscreant yet?’

  Marlowe was glad to hear that Dee at least felt that there was a miscreant. It wasn’t a view to which many subscribed. ‘As yet, no. I know who it is not, but that is not much help when the list is so long. But in visiting Cambridge, I happened to meet a boy, bereaved of his brother in what seemed to be a simple swimming accident.’

  ‘But you think not.’

  ‘I do think not, but I just don’t seem to be able to put my finger on why. The boy I met, though grieving, seemed to be very lucid and he too had been set upon when his brother was drowned. He remembers being pulled from the water and then pushed down again, repeatedly.’

  ‘That doesn’t – at first hearing – sound much like the death of Robert Greene,’ Dee observed, crushing some mint at the bottom of two glazed cups.

  ‘No, perhaps not. But then, just this Sunday morning, to be accurate, one Eunice Brown, one-time nanny to the Cecil family …’

  ‘Not Noo-Noo?’ Dee looked up from his chopping board.

  ‘You knew her?’

  Dee chuckled. ‘Well, not knew as such. But when Robert was just a little one – a littler one, perhaps I should say – running in his hanging sleeves in the corridors of power, Noo-Noo was never far behind. Mind you, she must have been getting on … I assume, from the context, that she is dead?’

  ‘Yes. Extremely.’

  ‘That’s a shame. She seemed a nice woman.’

  ‘So I believe.’ Marlowe should have known that Dee would know something unexpected. ‘She was found dead in her bed at Hatfield, murdered.’

  ‘Murdered?’ Dee’s eyes were wide. ‘I wasn’t expecting you to say that.’

  ‘Really?’

  Dee bowed his head modestly. ‘Well, yes, of course I was. But not because I am unusually prescient, just that murder is almost all we ever talk about.’

  Marlowe chuckled. ‘Yes, I do see that. The thing about the death of this poor old soul, this good woman, was the violence. Her face was bruised with the marks of many fingers and her throat had been gripped hard at least half a dozen times.’

  ‘You know as well as I do, Kit,’ Dee said, turning from the fire with two steaming cups, ‘that murdering someone by smothering or strangulation is not a simple matter of holding a person’s nose or throat for a moment or two. It can take about four minutes, as a rough rule of thumb.’

  ‘Odd you should say that, Doctor,’ Marlowe said, ‘I detected thumb marks on the poor woman’s neck. Is there a way, do you know, of telling one thumb from another?’

  Dee laughed, ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Kit. Miracles, as you know, take a little longer.’

  Marlowe took the cup and sniffed it. To his surprise, it smelled quite pleasant. ‘I do understand that, Doctor,’ he said, ‘but I had never seen so many different bruises to achieve one thing before.’

  ‘Perhaps the murderer was weak and had to keep changing their grip. As I remember Noo-Noo, she wasn’t strong. Had she put on weight? Become a big woman to subdue?’

  Marlowe shook his head and took a deep sip of the herbs. He pointed to the cup. ‘This is very nice,’ he said, his stagecraft only just managing to take the surprise from his voice. ‘She was tiny. Probably more so than when you saw her last, chasing after Master Robyn. And to me, although it was two days later, the bruises looked to be from a man’s hand. A larger woman, perhaps, but I would say a man.’ He stopped for a moment. Betty, the night attendant, was a comfortably built woman. But would she have the stomach for murder? He thought not.

  Dee could always follow Marlowe’s racing thoughts, perhaps better than any man alive and he did so now. ‘So, you think that the two murders are linked, because the lad who survived the drowning remembered coming up for the third time and because poor Mistress Brown was smothered by someone without the spirit for it.’

  Marlowe was disappointed. ‘Do you think that’s all it was? It seemed to me …’

  Dee looked solemn. ‘I have never drowned, speaking personally, and also I have never been smothered to death. But I have spoken to many who were. And the stories are the same. The drowned ones always say their lives flash before them. I admit I have always considered that a cliché, the kind of joke the dead do dearly love to play with us. But I do believe that as the body fights for air, certain pictures impress themselves on the brain, not once, but many times. A stutter of the brain, if you will. So this lad, remembering, sees himself coming up for air more than once, when in fact, he just did it as he surfaced the one and only time.’

  ‘He seemed so certain.’

  ‘Yes,’ Dee smiled. ‘They are. And as for poor Noo-Noo, she fought, despite her age and infirmity. Perhaps the person had no stomach for it but, having started, had no recourse but to go on, because he or she would be recognized and surely accused had the woman lived.’

  ‘Perhaps …’ Marlowe had seen the body. He had spoken to Richard Williams. Dee had done neither. ‘One thing, though, Doctor,’ he said. ‘Richard, the drowned boy’s brother, remembered a person holding him out of the water. He couldn’t describe them, he was almost dead at that point. But he did remember him saying something, over and over.’

  ‘And that was?’ Despite his easy answers, Dee was intrigued.

  ‘He said that the voice said – he was sure it was a man – he said: “Have you seen him yet?”’

  ‘Did he know what that could mean?’ Dee rummaged for a piece of paper and stub of pencil in the recesses of his gown.

  ‘He couldn’t think. I have wondered since whether perhaps it referred to his brother, dead by this time and in the hands of the current. But I don’t see why it should.’

  ‘Memory is a tricky thing,’ Dee pointed out. ‘It could be something he had heard hours, if not days, before. Or when he was coming to – I assume they pulled him out of the water insensible?’

  ‘Yes, I believe they did.’

  ‘In that case, it is explained, surely.’ Dee drained his cup with a smack of the lips. ‘He heard his rescuers asking if anyone had seen the twin.’ He put his cup down smartly on the hearth and the subject seemed to be closed.

  Marlowe was still not convinced. He had been so near to making a link. ‘It’s a shame that we can’t ask Eunice Brown what she heard,’ he said, only half seriously.

  Dee’s eyes lit up. ‘But we can!’ he said, jumping up. Then his face fell. ‘We don’t have anything to guide our quest, though, do we? Nothing she had worn or owned. Even touched.’

  Marlowe smiled. ‘Yes, we do,’ he said. He put his hand inside his doublet and pulled out a square of silk, a kerchief his mother had sent him as a gift, years ago, which he had always treasured. He unwrapped it and there, sparkling in the firelight, was the angel’s tear.

  Dee looked at it dubiously. ‘What is it? It doesn’t look like anything Eunice Brown would own.’

  ‘She didn’t. The First Finder found it on her forehead. She thinks it was left by an angel, to show that Eunice Brown had gone to Heaven.’

  Dee took it up carefully between finger and thumb. ‘That would be nice, wou
ldn’t it? Even for you, Kit, it would be nice to think we would go to Heaven, escorted there on soft wings. But no, in this case, our First Finder is wrong. This is nothing more or less than a glass bead. Even so, if it was on the dead woman’s skin for a while …’

  ‘Some hours, I should say. She was cold when they found her.’

  ‘Then, despite the fact that it has been in other hands, then …’ Dee looked up, eyes sparkling. ‘Shall we try?’

  Marlowe doubted that the dead, particularly this dead, who was hopefully in the arms of her Redeemer, as she had always wished, could help, but anything was worth a try. ‘What can I do to help?’

  ‘Well, you can curb your scepticism, Kit, if you would.’

  Marlowe looked wounded.

  ‘Don’t look at me like that. I know you believe in nothing you can’t see and touch. But the other world is never far away and, with luck, I can bring it here today.’

  ‘Do we need to wait for midnight or anything like that?’ Marlowe had seen Dee about his business before and a strange and wonderful business it was. But never by daylight.

  ‘No, no. I have found it works at any time of day, if the spirits are willing. If you could just check to see where Jane is, I will get some things gathered together.’

  ‘Jane doesn’t approve, then?’

  Dee sighed. ‘Sadly, no. But I will prevail, I know. Just put your head around the kitchen door. If she is cooking, we will have at least an hour.’

  Marlowe made his way into the flagged kitchen, where Jane Dee held undoubted sway. She had a cook, who spent most of her time sulking in the corner while her mistress turned out pastries as light as air and sweetmeats for which men would sell their soul. Today she was embroiled, almost literally, in the making of a great pie, to feed the entire household. She looked up, brushing a damp frond of hair from her forehead with the back of a sweaty hand.

  ‘Do you need something, Kit?’ she asked, her natural sweet nature only just managing to mask the testiness beneath.

  ‘I just wondered if you would like to join us,’ he said, pleasantly. ‘But you look a little—’

  ‘Busy. Yes.’ Her look said it all. Men!

  ‘I’ll go and tell the doctor, shall I?’

  ‘Mmm.’ She was concentrating on her pie.

  Marlowe closed the door of Dee’s sanctum behind him firmly. ‘She’s making a pie,’ he reported.

  ‘That will keep her busy,’ Dee said, happily. ‘It’s almost a religion with her, the Thursday pie.’ He swept a hand over the table in the middle of the room. ‘I have simplified my methods from what you may be used to. I don’t use cockerel’s blood any more, as you can see. I have found a dried mushroom which has almost exactly the same composition. I still use the sulphur, of course.’ He gave a little chuckle at the thought that any conjuring could take place without it.

  Marlowe clicked his tongue. The very thought!

  ‘I shall have to burn a feather in a moment, but Jane won’t smell that in the kitchen. Then I do need to recite an incantation, so I would be grateful if you could hold that book for me. And lastly, put the little bead on that mirror in the centre … yes, just there.’ Dee arranged his table to his liking and then pinched his eyeglasses onto his nose.

  In other hands, the summoning would be a farce. But as Dee intoned the words in an arcane tongue – along with the smell of the burning feather and the sulphur, and the glint of the tiny bead, which seemed to draw all the light from the room and concentrate it there, on the mirror – the shade of Eunice Brown was almost palpable in the room. She wasn’t visible, but Marlowe could smell the scent of lavender and old lady rising above that of the burning. There was a sigh which set the candles guttering.

  ‘Eunice?’ Dee asked. ‘Eunice Brown? Is that you?’

  Marlowe knew it was vital to ask the question outright, otherwise a demon could come uninvited. There was no sound, but the air seemed to give its assent. There was a brief gust of warmth, infused again with lavender.

  ‘She’s here,’ Marlowe whispered and Dee nodded, almost imperceptibly. He knew that the spirits of the devout could be easily scared off.

  ‘Eunice,’ Dee said gently, ‘we are here to help you. We want to find out who murdered you.’

  The air shimmered and the smell of lavender faded. An enormous crash filled their ears but nothing they could see had fallen over. Even so, they could have sworn that the floor vibrated with the shock of it. The two men froze, waiting for Jane to explode through the door, but no one came.

  Dee raised his face to the ceiling and whispered, ‘Eunice. Eunice. If you are there, tap once.’

  There wasn’t a sound; even the slight sizzling from the burning feather was silent now. Marlowe breathed in and could smell no lavender. The spirit echo that had possibly been Eunice Brown had gone.

  After a few moments, Dee dropped his shoulders and sighed. ‘She isn’t here, Kit. But she was, I think?’ He looked eager.

  ‘She was,’ Marlowe agreed, against his better judgement. He found proof of the afterlife difficult to come to terms with these days; if there was an afterlife, might there not also be a God? He smiled to himself – he must be getting old, seeing both sides of an argument. Being certain was perhaps a young man’s game.

  ‘I’m sorry, Kit,’ Dee said, tidying up his paraphernalia. ‘I had hoped for more.’

  ‘Lettys would be happy,’ Marlowe told him.

  ‘Lettuce?’ Dee had never considered the feelings of vegetables. It was bad enough that little Madinia was beginning to ask why the lambs bleated so piteously when they were passing Smithfield; if vegetables had to be considered too, it would be the end of him.

  ‘Lettys. The First Finder. She was anxious that Eunice had gone to Heaven.’

  ‘I don’t think we proved that,’ Dee said, honestly.

  ‘It would be enough for Lettys,’ Marlowe assured him. He looked down at the scorched table and put Eunice Brown from his mind. There was nothing else he could do for her or Roger Williams or even Robert Greene, for now. But there was one other thing he needed to ask before he went.

  ‘What else did you want to ask?’ Dee said, flopping back down in his chair.

  ‘How do you do that?’ Marlowe asked him.

  ‘What?’ Dee looked beatific.

  ‘Know what I am going to say?’

  ‘Practice,’ Dee said, simply. ‘That and listening and remembering. Some day, I will find I have remembered too much and that will be the death of me. But until then, I never forget what has been said – it’s a blessing and a curse.’ His eyes clouded over and Marlowe knew he was remembering his Helene.

  Marlowe tried him at his own game. ‘Can you speak to Cecil and get him to lift the closing of the theatres?’ Boldness was the way.

  ‘I can speak to Cecil,’ Dee said. ‘I can also ask him to lift the closure. But it won’t get the theatres reopened, I fear. Cecil speaks to me because the Queen would wish it. We have had our ups and downs, Gloriana and I, but she is too afraid of what she fears I might do to throw me to the wolves. And so, I am tolerated, no more.’

  ‘But surely, he would listen to you. Your science …?’

  ‘Is second to none, of course it is. But for now, no advice counts unless it drips from the oily tongue of Simon Forman.’

  ‘Forman?’ Marlowe laughed. ‘But they must know him for a charlatan, surely?’

  ‘A charlatan. A rogue. But, sadly, for the moment, a fashionable charlatan and rogue. Go and see him, but make sure you take a heavy purse. They say he doesn’t speak to his wife unless she pays him. Were I her, I wouldn’t pay, but there’s no accounting for taste. Do you know where to find him?’

  Marlowe thought for a moment. ‘Westminster, isn’t it?’

  ‘That’s right. Just get to the west wall of the abbey and then follow your nose – the smell of dead newt is almost unmistakeable.’

  Marlowe remembered it – it seemed an age since they had resurrected Robert Greene, however briefly; it would be an e
xperience to meet the magus in his own house. It was a pity that he would have to stay polite – playing with charlatans was something he relished, but with a job to do as important as reopening the theatres, he would need his most honeyed words. He would just need to take care that they didn’t choke him. But first, he had to tell Noo-Noo’s boys some sad news.

  TWELVE

  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.