Witch Hammer Read online

  ‘The Dark One.’ Marlowe nodded. ‘Any idea who that might be?’

  Scot looked puzzled. ‘I told you. The Great Beast. Beelzebub. Lord of—’

  ‘Yes,’ Marlowe broke in. ‘You told me that. But who is it, do you think? Who is . . . I can’t think of any other way of putting this, Reginald. You don’t really think it is the Devil, do you?’ He looked at him closely. ‘Or do you?’ He was beginning to regret cutting him loose. The man was clearly barking mad. All that research into arcana had clearly clouded his senses.

  ‘Oh, I see. Who is it? Well, I have absolutely no idea.’

  ‘That will be fun then, to expose him.’

  Scot looked puzzled all over again. ‘Why would I want to do that?’ he asked.

  ‘Well, to stop him having sabbats all over the place, I would have thought. Depraving local crones, that kind of thing. It can’t be good for the morale of these villages, Reginald, to have this kind of behaviour going on. And it is, as I understand it, against the law.’

  ‘Of 1562, yes, but I hadn’t taken you for a prude, Kit,’ Scot said, still rubbing his wrists.

  ‘And you would be right,’ Marlowe said. ‘But I have seen some strange things in my life, and the fewer of them there are around, the better I like it.’

  ‘It is an ancient religion,’ Scot pointed out.

  ‘I seem to remember you mentioned sacrifice,’ Marlowe riposted.

  ‘Of a goat, a kid. Perhaps a lamb or calf. Not a person,’ Scot said. ‘They may talk of such things, but they wouldn’t kill a person.’

  ‘What, like no one would have killed Ned Sledd? Lord Strange? William Clopton?’

  Scot looked thoughtful. ‘I see you intend to come with me. But I really don’t want to interfere, Kit.’

  ‘I have a compromise, Reginald,’ Marlowe offered. ‘If there is no sacrifice, no one is in danger, everyone seems to just be enjoying a roll in the hay under the moon, I agree to leave well enough alone. But, if anyone is clearly coerced, in danger . . .’

  ‘Then you’ll step out with your dagger?’ Scot asked. ‘Don’t forget there will be thirteen of them and only two of us. Unless you have others in mind to have tag along. I can see my covert watching is getting less likely to succeed.’

  ‘No, no, Reginald. I won’t spoil your spying. I do have a plan.’

  ‘What do you propose?’ Scot asked.

  ‘Help yourself to a horse,’ Marlowe suggested. ‘After mine, Simon Hayward’s is the best we have.’

  ‘Why . . .?’

  ‘I can’t ask any of Lord Strange’s Men to get involved in this,’ Marlowe said. ‘They’ve been through enough. But Masters Hayward and Cawdray have already proved they can handle themselves – and in somebody else’s fight. To be doubly sure, however, if you just happen to have ridden off on Master Hayward’s horse, it’s odds on he’ll come looking for you.’

  ‘Brilliant, Kit!’ Scot snapped his thumb and forefinger, quite pleased that he could still do it. ‘Wait a minute, though.’ He stopped in his tracks as realization dawned. ‘I can be hanged for horse stealing.’

  Marlowe smiled at him. ‘You can be hanged for murder too, Reginald. Life can be a bitch, can’t it? Choice, choices, always choices.’

  With a sigh, Scot walked off, limping only slightly, to where Hayward’s horse waited for him in its stall.

  Reginald Scot was sitting on an elder stump that afternoon, his ink and paper beside him, making notes for the new chapter for his book. The hot sun had made him mellow and perhaps a little light-headed and he found himself listening to the crickets in the long grass and watching the butterflies chase each other in their spiralling flights over the fields. His senses were heightened by the heat of the day and the breathless air so that he almost thought he could see the rainbow dust flick from their wings with every beat. The words of an old folk song came into his mind with its strange, haunting tune: ‘Fly over moor and fly over mead, Fly over living and fly over dead, Fly you east or fly you west, Fly to her that loves me best.’

  ‘That had better be Mistress Scot, hop grower, or there’ll be Hell to pay.’

  Scot shrieked and fell off his stump, ink and parchment going everywhere. He squinted up at the figure standing above him, half blotting out the sun. ‘Marlowe,’ he growled. ‘Damn you, Kit, my heart is beating fit to burst out of my chest. You could have killed me.’

  ‘That’s what Master Hayward planned to do until I explained the circumstances,’ Marlowe said and waved an arm to the two horsemen sitting on their animals on the slope of the hill.

  ‘I didn’t hear a thing,’ Scot said. ‘How did three men on horses creep up on me so quietly?’

  Marlowe looked north into the hazy distance. ‘Isn’t that Meon Hill over there?’ he said. ‘I think you’ll find that explains it all.’

  And Scot threw his book at him. Rather pointedly, Simon Hayward dismounted and strode towards the trees, patting the rump and shoulder of his stolen horse before untethering it and hauling it away. ‘Just for the record,’ he grunted to Scot, ‘my horse. You can have this bloody bag of bones I’ve been jolted around on all morning. And you can pick up the cost of the hire.’

  Richard Cawdray led his horse forward by the bridle and helped Scot up. ‘I hope this isn’t some wild-goose chase, Master Scot,’ he said. ‘Marlowe here says you may need our help.’

  Scot looked at the poet. ‘I may, gentlemen,’ he said, ‘but I should warn you first that come midnight you may see sights you’d wish you never had. If you are of nervous dispositions . . .’

  Marlowe clapped Scot on the back. ‘There’s no chance of that,’ he said. ‘The deal I promised Hayward is that if the witches didn’t ride I’d let him hang you as a horse thief. Either way, his day is made.’

  ‘I don’t mind telling you, Martin,’ Will Shaxsper said, ‘I don’t like this. What exactly did Marlowe say?’

  The actor looked out from the tower of the church of Mary Magdalene, his eyes fixed on the camp of Greville’s men that still clustered on the far side of the river. ‘I told you,’ Martin said. ‘He and the gentlemen had urgent business, viz and to wit, to catch Reginald Scot, the murderer.’

  ‘Yes.’ Shaxsper gnawed his lip. ‘Murder’s out of tune and sweet revenge grows harsh.’

  ‘Marlowe?’ Martin thought it sounded familiar.

  ‘Do you mind?’ Shaxsper rounded on him. ‘That’s a small thing, but it is mine own!’

  ‘Sorry,’ Martin said, shrugging. He clicked his tongue with impatience. ‘What are they waiting for?’ he hissed, watching Greville’s men, the distance making them look like ants, but ants who had lost their work ethic as they sat dicing and playing cards on the river bank. Every now and then a little lawyer with his arm in a sling waddled back and forth, looking at Woodstock through the summer’s haze.

  A new gloom had descended on Shaxsper. ‘They’re waiting to realize that we’ve lost our best people,’ he said. ‘Oh, no offence to you, Martin, and I fancy I can wield a reasonable sword myself, but Marlowe, Scot, Cawdray, Hayward, Lady Joyce and Boscastle have gone. Even Thomas has nipped on ahead to Oxford. Where is everybody?’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Martin said with a smile. ‘You get used to this taking a show on the road. I’ve played to smaller houses scores of times. If you’re going to be an actor, Will, it’s just something you have to live with.’

  ‘I don’t care about the size of the house!’ Shaxsper yelled. ‘I care about escaping with my skin.’

  ‘You have that worry when you take a show on the road as well,’ Martin said, fingering his head reminiscently. ‘Feel there.’ He lowered his head to Shaxsper. ‘Go on.’

  The poet reached out a tentative finger. ‘A bump.’

  ‘Fire irons. Flung from the crowd in Highgate, summer of . . . oh, when was it? 1581, I think it was. I was out cold for nearly three days. Now, that was a tough crowd.’

  A silence fell between them with only the distant sounds from the Greville camp to break it. Shaxsper
dropped his chin on to his hands, folded on to the warm stones of Mary Magdalene. He missed his children, he even missed his wife. His nice little cottage, even if it was currently full of his father and various cousins and aunts. An actor’s life was not for him, he decided. At this point he didn’t really mind what life he had, as long as there was quite a lot more of it still to come.

  FIFTEEN

  Kit Marlowe had always had enough thoughts in his head to kill the slowest time and he had a facility for closing his ears to the babble around him without taking on a vacant look which would give the game away. Hayward had never had such an appreciative audience for his hunting sagas and even if the poet didn’t wince quite enough at the disembowelling episode, then Hayward was still content. Cawdray and Scot hatched a complex plan to watch the coming Sabbat, involving all kinds of arcane lighting devices. It wasn’t really important that Marlowe wasn’t listening, because they didn’t stand a hope in Hell of working. Scot realized this as soon as Cawdray started talking about walrus blubber, which apparently burnt with a particularly clear light. Witches had very sensitive noses, or so they claimed; they would be sure to smell it and besides, where would they get a walrus at this time of night? Marlowe was repeating the lines over and over in his head; he knew this poem was a keeper and had no means of writing it down in that he had a pencil but no paper. And anyway, what was the point of writing things down if actors could just walk off with it when they chose? As the evening wore on, the conversation grew more desultory until it ceased altogether.

  Scot suddenly spoke in a harsh whisper. ‘Kit!’

  ‘Come, live with me and be my love,’ Marlowe said, startled out of his internal poem.

  If Scot was surprised he didn’t show it. ‘I’d have to check with Mistress Scot, of course, but I’m sure we would get on famously,’ he said. ‘But there are more important things afoot, Kit.’

  Marlowe shook his head and smiled sleepily. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Miles away. Has something begun?’

  ‘By no means,’ Scot said. ‘The Sabbat itself won’t start until just before midnight. They like to come to the climax of the ceremony then. No, I thought we should perhaps think of getting into position. We won’t be able to if it gets any darker. If we start blundering about in the dark we’ll give the game away, I’m afraid. We don’t want to be seen.’

  ‘Why not?’ Hayward asked sharply. ‘I thought the idea was that we should unmask these fiends of Hell? As they take to the air of their evil steeds, we will leap out and drag them down to the earth that had . . .’

  A strange light had come into Simon Hayward’s eye and he was releasing rather too much spit. Scot stopped him by placing his hand gently on his arm. He had seen this kind of zealot before and it usually resulted in some poor old soul being trotted around a room until she dropped dead.

  ‘Master Hayward,’ he said. ‘We are not here to unmask anyone. Don’t forget that these are deluded women – and men, often – who think that the Devil is their God. They don’t fly, except in their imaginations. They can’t conjure storms or kill people. What I want is to see a Sabbat so I can write it up in my next edition. You do understand that, don’t you? All of you?’ He looked around their small circle. The men nodded, but Hayward looked unsure. Scot decided that he would keep him by him, so that he could make sure he didn’t ruin everything.

  Marlowe reached across and slapped Scot on the back. ‘We understand, Reginald,’ he said. ‘And just to show you how much I want to help, I would like to give you this.’ He held out his loaned pencil.

  ‘How kind,’ said Scot, dubiously. ‘A small piece of wood, wound with string. Some kind of personal talisman, is it, Kit? You should know that I don’t really believe in such things.’

  Hayward eyed it superstitiously and Cawdray leaned forward and took it. ‘Is this a pencil?’ he asked Marlowe, who nodded. ‘I have heard of them.’ He turned to the others. ‘It is graphite, from the north, Northumberland, I think. It is very soft and leaves a mark on paper, a little like charcoal but less messy. An expensive trinket for a wandering playwright.’ He looked at Marlowe appraisingly.

  ‘A gift,’ Marlowe said. ‘No, I should be more accurate, a loan, from Lord Ferdinando Strange. I am just a little tired of being splattered with ink when I am near Master Scot. Just look at my boots.’ He thrust out one leg for them to see the fine spatter of black on the soft tan leather, but it had become too dark to see much more than shapes. ‘It is dark, suddenly,’ he said. ‘Reginald is right, we should be in position. Where would you like us?’ he asked the witch expert.

  ‘I think we should stay in pairs,’ Scot said, looking meaningfully at Hayward. ‘Because you and I have discussed this at length over the last few days, Kit, I suggest that we split up and each one takes either Master Cawdray or Master Hayward. Which do you prefer?’ But before Marlowe could express any kind of preference, he said, ‘I’ll take Master Hayward. As for position, anywhere out of sight but from where you can see the stones. If I were to advise you, I would say make sure there is something at your back.’

  ‘Why?’ Cawdray said. ‘In case a witch creeps up on us unawares?’

  ‘No,’ Scot said, ‘unless you have some kind of trouble with old ladies coming up behind you. No, I merely suggest that so your cover is more complete. Don’t forget –’ and again he glared at Hayward, who seemed immune to hints and suggestion – ‘our aim is to watch and learn and remain undetected.’

  ‘We understand,’ Hayward said, testily. ‘I’ll go with Scot, then. We’ll see you at the foot of the hill, when we have seen what there is to see.’

  ‘That’s the spirit,’ Cawdray said. ‘If you go first and conceal yourselves, we’ll follow and choose our place.’

  Scot and Hayward crept around the side of the hill and soon they could be seen as silhouettes against the darkening sky.

  ‘How will we see where they have gone?’ Marlowe said, suddenly seeing a flaw in the plan.

  ‘If it doesn’t get too dark before they are in position, this will help us,’ Cawdray said, and took a tube from within his jerkin and handed it to Marlowe. ‘Have you seen one of these? It is an array of lenses which can make distant things seem nearer.’

  ‘I have heard of such things,’ Marlowe said, ‘but not seen one.’ It seemed to him the kind of invention that Nicholas Faunt would be keeping more than a weather eye on. It seemed made for people like him and his dark doings. ‘How does it work?’

  Hayward took it from him and held it up to his eye. ‘It isn’t always easy to use,’ he said. ‘You need to focus your eye through the tube on the distant object. This suits my eyes very well, but some with shorter or longer sight than mine can see less well. I think that there will be improvements, but for now it serves.’ He was quiet for a moment then said, ‘I see them. They are at the far end of the stone circle from here and have concealed themselves in a bush, a tangle more than a bush. We should try and find our hiding place on the other side.’

  ‘May I try it?’ Marlowe asked, holding out his hand.

  ‘By all means,’ Cawdray said. ‘Look over there at the horizon. It will be easier for you to see than the dark side of the hill.’

  Marlowe screwed up one eye and put the tube to the other. He scanned the horizon from east to west and then swung back a little, peering intently.

  ‘What can you see?’ Cawdray asked, looking in the same direction.

  ‘I thought I saw . . . but no, it was nothing.’ He handed the tube back and Cawdray stowed it away again inside his doublet. ‘That thing is a great invention to trick the eye. I thought I saw a horseman on the road, but when I looked again he was gone.’

  ‘It can mislead, you’re right,’ Cawdray admitted, ‘especially when you first use it. But –’ and he patted his chest – ‘I find it useful every now and then. The hunt. That kind of thing. But, Kit, I think we should be on the move. The moon is up and if we wait longer we will stand out like a white hart in a dark wood.’

  ‘Very poetic
image, Master Cawdray,’ Marlowe said. ‘Do you dabble?’

  ‘I wouldn’t presume,’ Cawdray said. ‘I have no skill at any of the creative arts. I merely observe. Shall I go first?’

  Marlowe extended a hand and fell into step behind Cawdray, who, if he wasn’t creative, was certainly very good at keeping to the shadows and at picking his way over rough ground. They were soon at the top of the hill and at once discovered that Scot and Hayward had already collared the only comfortable cover. Marlowe and Cawdray would have to lie under the lee of a hedge, one arm around the bole of a tree and their legs braced against the bank.

  ‘Do you suffer from cramp, Master Marlowe?’ Cawdray asked. ‘But perhaps not – your bones are younger than mine.’

  ‘I have not found cramp to be a problem, no,’ Marlowe said, squeezing himself closer to the ground and tucking his collar into his doublet so that the moon would not pick out the white. ‘I hope tonight does not prove to be my first experience of it.’

  ‘Unfortunately,’ Cawdray said, ‘I suffer sometimes with a nervous twitch in my legs. My late wife often complained of it. She said other men did not kick in the night.’ There was a silence, then he said, ‘I would tease her, saying that she ought not to know such things. How we would laugh.’ He sighed. ‘I miss her so much, Kit. She has been gone nearly a year and I miss her so much.’

  ‘She is not gone if you think of her,’ Marlowe said. ‘The dead don’t leave us if their names are still spoken.’ He felt the man’s hand on his shoulder for a brief second.

  ‘A lovely thought, Master Poet,’ Cawdray muttered. ‘Thank you.’

  There was no movement from the clump of stunted trees opposite and the moon was temporarily behind a cloud. There was nothing to do but wait. Marlowe let himself doze lightly but with one eye metaphorically open. Having to hang on with one hand made it impossible to sleep properly without jumping awake with every slight relaxation. The feeling of falling off a log that comes so often on the point of sleep was quite literally a fact in his precarious position. Then Cawdray tapped him on the shoulder with the fingers of his gripping hand.