The Reckoning Read online

  ‘Dumped the Spanish Tragedy’ was the only part that Tom Kyd had really heard.

  Poley sighed and shook his head. ‘Tragedy indeed,’ he said.

  Kyd staggered to his feet, holding onto the table with one hand and trying to grab the dagger hilt at his back with the other. ‘I’ll kill him!’ he yelled. Even in a place as rough as the Angel, he got some strange looks.

  ‘No, no,’ Poley sat him down gently. ‘No, I’ve seen Marlowe in action, Tom. Saving your presence, you wouldn’t stand a chance. No, there are more subtle ways. Tell me, what’s the Spanish Tragedy about?’

  Kyd frowned. How long had Poley got? ‘Well …’ he began.

  ‘In a nutshell, Tom,’ Poley said quickly. In answer to Kyd’s unspoken question, he did not have all night.

  ‘Er … revenge, I s’pose.’

  ‘Exactly. A dish best served cold, is it not?’

  Kyd tried to nod.

  ‘So …’ Poley leaned closer to him. ‘Why don’t we beat Marlowe at his own game? Print a few handbills of our own. Making it look as though Marlowe wrote them? That will give the powers that be an excuse to arrest him. Throw him in the Bridewell. What do you say?’

  ‘Well, I … I can’t just write … I mean, I’ve had a few, y’know.’

  Poley patted his arm. ‘Even poets of your calibre have off nights, Tom. I’ll tell you what – would it be presumptuous of me to dictate a few lines? You can write it down. Then, tomorrow, or the next day, it’ll be your turn to dictate to me. How does that sound?’

  Kyd thought for a moment. It actually sounded rather odd, but any chance for revenge against Marlowe. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘Oh,’ a sudden thought crossed his mind, ‘I haven’t got …’

  ‘Quill, ink and parchment?’ Poley smiled. ‘Luckily, I have all three.’ For some reason, Kyd found this hysterically funny.

  ‘Now,’ said Poley, when Kyd had quietened down a little, ‘write this down. Ready?’

  Kyd steadied his hand to find the inkwell. ‘Ready,’ he said and wrote down Poley’s words.

  ‘“Your Machiavellian Merchant spoils the state.”’

  Kyd looked up, eyes wide. ‘That’s so good,’ he said. ‘Machiavellian. That’s what they called Kit at Corpus Christi, you know. Machiavel.’ He shook his head, overcome by the wondrous serendipity.

  ‘Hmm,’ beamed Poley. ‘Go on. “Your usury doth leave us all for dead. Your artifex and craftsmen makes out fate. And …”’ he pointed, ‘a capital A, there, Thomas. It’s a new line.’

  ‘Oh, sorry.’ Kyd bent close like a child at his lessons and made the small a into an A.

  ‘“And like the Jews you eat me up as bread.”’

  ‘Jew of Malta!’ Kyd had a couple of goes at clicking his fingers and gave up. ‘Very good. Very good.’

  ‘I tell you what, Thomas, I will pause when it’s a new line. Then you know how to write it. Would that work for you?’

  Kyd nodded, waiting eagerly. If a pointer could hold a quill, Kyd would have been its image.

  ‘“Since words nor threats nor any other thing,”’ Kyd was in the swing of things now. ‘“Can make you to avoid this certain ill, We’ll cut your throats, in your temples praying, Nor Paris massacre so much blood did spill …”’

  ‘The Massacre at Paris! Brilliant. Is that it?’

  ‘For now,’ Poley told him. ‘How shall we sign it?’

  ‘How about …?’ Kyd was excited. ‘Kit Marlowe?’

  Poley smiled. ‘A little too obvious, Tom, don’t you think? What about … Tamburlaine?’

  ‘His most brilliant creation!’ Kyd shouted. ‘The scourge of God!’

  ‘The scourge of God, indeed,’ Poley said.

  ‘Tamburlaine it is,’ Kyd said and signed the parchment with a flourish.

  Kit Marlowe looked out of the window in his room at Scadbury. The apple orchards would be in bloom soon now that spring was almost here and he could see the fat buds on the tips of the branches. Finches fossicked here and there for insects hiding in the folds of the pale green. He smiled to himself as he remembered his Cambridge days, closeted in the Court with Parker and Bromerick and the others, with their close-cropped hair and their grey fustian robes. He glanced down at the black velvet he wore now, the silk shirt, the leather-laced venetians. Where was Christopher Marley, the cobbler’s son? The scrawny lad who held pots at the Star while grown men got drunk around him? The timid scholar, leaping over puddles in the Dark Entry on his way to school? How long ago was all that? It was yesterday as the calendar of his twenty-nine summers showed.

  He took up the quill again. The lines of Paulinus were dull. Clever Latin to be sure, but they lacked the sparkle of today. ‘Home when he came,’ he wrote, ‘he seemed not to be there, But, like exiled air thrust from his sphere, Set in a foreign place …’ He stretched and got up. In the knot garden below his window, Audrey Walsingham was walking alone, her cloak trailing in the fresh-mown grass and Padraig staggering along behind her. The old dog looked quietly triumphant; another winter beaten, another spring welcomed. What, his panting mouth seemed to say, can vanquish him now?

  ‘Thus near the bed,’ Marlowe took up the quill again, ‘she blushing stood upright, And from her countenance behold you might, A kind of twilight break, which through her hair, As from an orient cloud, glimps’d here and there; And round about the chamber this false morn, Brought forth the day before the day was born.’

  He threw down the quill. Murders hung around him like shadows, whispering in the dark. John Foxe lay flat on his bed, his face grinning up at him. Moll was smiling too, but her smile was the gaping gash in her throat. Roger Dalston wasn’t laughing at all, but his mask was, the scarlet death mask of the Lord of Misrule. And last, but by no means least, Henry Parkin sat upright in his pew, faithful to his God until the end. They all of them cried vengeance in Kit Marlowe’s head and he knew he would have to leave Hero and Leander to another day.

  Tom Kyd woke up with a start. The pounding in his head was the result of too much Rhenish at the Fox and Grapes, but the pounding on his door was of a different cadence. It was urgent. It was loud. It was terrifying.

  He stumbled out of bed in the half light and realized it was not yet dawn. He had no time to fumble for a candle and he slid the bolt. The door crashed back and big men barged into the room, armed to the teeth and wearing the livery of the Queen.

  ‘Thomas Kyd?’ their leader barked, thick lips in a black beard.

  ‘What’s all this about?’ Kyd asked.

  The man grabbed him by the throat, squeezing under his jaw until he thought he would be sick. ‘Are you Thomas Kyd?’

  ‘Yes,’ he wheezed as best he could.

  ‘Turn it over,’ the man barked to the others. While they proceeded to overturn Kyd’s bed, Kyd’s press, Kyd’s life, the bearded man spun the playwright round and tied his hands behind his back.

  ‘Papers,’ another man said, having emptied a drawer.

  ‘Bring them,’ the bearded man ordered and they bundled Kyd out of the door.

  At first he didn’t know where he was. The room was pitch black with no chink of light and he knew he was lying in straw, which rustled under his body. Apart from the chafing to his wrists that the ropes had caused, he felt no pain. It was cold here, however, and he sensed that he was deep below ground, in some Hell made even grimmer by man.

  The sliding of a bolt made him jump and a shaft of light burst into the room. This was a cell, with a door and no windows. Two guards hauled him to his feet and dragged him out, stumbling up stone steps to a low vaulted room with iron-barred windows high in the walls.

  On a chair facing him sat a portly man with a Puritan collar and a kind face. He smiled at him.

  ‘Are you Thomas Kyd?’ the man asked.

  ‘I am,’ Kyd replied. The last time he had evaded the question, an oaf nearly broke his neck.

  ‘I am William Waad,’ the man said, ‘Governor of Her Majesty’s Tower.’

  Kyd blinked and swallowed.
Hours ago he was a drunken playwright bemoaning his lot in life. Now he stood at Peter’s gate, but the devil was talking to him. Waad held up a sheet of paper. ‘Do you recognize this?’ he asked.

  Kyd’s eyes had not refocussed after the darkness yet and it took him a while. ‘No,’ he lied.

  ‘No?’ Waad looked concerned and confused all in one expression. In reality, he was neither. ‘What about this?’ He held up another sheet.

  ‘Ah,’ Kyd almost smiled. This was his. This was real. ‘That’s the opening page of my play,’ he said. ‘The Spanish Tragedy.’

  ‘The Spanish Tragedy, yes,’ Waad said, ‘yes indeed. Very good, I’m sure, but you see, I’m a little confused by all this. You say this,’ he held up the Tragedy, ‘is yours but this,’ he held up the other sheet, ‘isn’t and yet,’ he held the two pages together, side by side, ‘the handwriting is identical.’

  ‘I … er … I cannot explain that,’ Kyd said.

  ‘Oh, I’m sure you can,’ Waad said as though to a small child. ‘For everything there is a reason.’

  Kyd said nothing. He stared straight ahead, beyond Waad to the cold, grey stones of the wall at the man’s back.

  Waad stood up. ‘Let me show you something,’ he said, smiling gently and taking Kyd by the arm. He led him across the flag-stoned floor and up some steps to another level. Kyd stood transfixed. Around him were machines, contraptions of wood and iron, with wheels and cranks and levers.

  ‘You wrote The Spanish Tragedy, Master Kyd,’ Waad said. ‘Tell me, does strappado appear in the play?’

  Kyd didn’t know what Waad was talking about. He didn’t want to know; but Waad had other ideas. ‘These little straps,’ he pointed to where they dangled from their roof-high supports, ‘you tie them around your wrists – or your thumbs – and you haul a person up, off the ground. His own weight does the damage, tears ligaments, dislocates joints. The pain is excruciating.’

  Kyd shuddered and swallowed hard.

  ‘Oh, just a little something we borrowed from the Inquisition,’ Waad said. ‘Ah, now, this,’ he led Kyd to a large wheel bolted to the floor. ‘This is home grown. Skeffington’s Gyves. Want to know how it works?’

  ‘No!’ Kyd shouted. ‘No, I don’t! What kind of butcher are you?’

  ‘Me?’ Waad was affronted. ‘Oh, my dear fellow, no. I’ve frightened you and I am so sorry. No, I am not a torturer. We have a man for that. His name is Richard Topcliffe. Come, I’ll introduce you.’

  ‘No!’ Kyd ran screaming across the room but there was no way out.

  ‘Calm yourself, Master Kyd,’ Waad said, softly. ‘Not even Master Topcliffe can touch you without the express permission of Her Majesty. Do you think us barbarians? Tell me, Master Kyd, have you had the pleasure of meeting Her Majesty?’

  ‘No.’ Kyd’s voice was barely audible. ‘No, I haven’t.’

  ‘You’d like her,’ Waad said. ‘Still a beauty after all these years. Gloriana. She makes our sun rise, Master Kyd – be in no doubt about that. Would she give her consent to use torture on such as you?’ He shook his head and sighed. ‘She’d fight it, by God. She’d fight it with every breath in her body, but in the end, for the safety of the realm, the survival of the state … Well, she is Harry’s daughter.’

  ‘Safety of the realm?’ Kyd jabbered. ‘Survival of the state? In the name of God, what have I done?’

  Waad produced another sheet of paper, this time from the purse at his hip. ‘Have you seen this before?’ he asked.

  Kyd squinted at it. It was difficult to read in the dim light, but then, his eyes were full of tears anyway. ‘What is it?’

  ‘It’s an Arian blasphemy, Master Kyd. A treatise – or part of one – that casts doubt on the divinity of our Lord. It claims that Christ was just a carpenter, the son of Joseph and not the son of God.’

  ‘Where did you get that?’ Kyd said, his lip trembling.

  ‘It was found among your papers,’ Waad told him, ‘when the guards collected you.’

  ‘That’s not mine!’ Kyd shrieked.

  ‘Oh, really, Master Kyd,’ Waad chuckled.

  ‘It’s Marlowe’s. We shared lodgings in Hog Lane. His rubbish must have got mixed up with mine. You have to believe me!’

  ‘Marlowe?’ Waad raised an eyebrow. ‘Christopher Marlowe?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, that’s him.’

  ‘And the paper I showed you a moment ago, the one signed Tamburlaine, the one in your handwriting …?’

  ‘Marlowe,’ Kyd shouted. ‘Marlowe made me write it.’

  Waad chuckled again. ‘Marlowe,’ he said.

  ‘What did I say about bad pennies?’ Marlowe said. He had been walking by the moat at Scadbury, the lily pads wide and glossy under the bright sky. He had seen Nicholas Faunt cantering over the hill towards him. The projectioner reined in and swung out of the saddle.

  ‘Kit, this isn’t a social call and I haven’t time for niceties. There’s a warrant out for your arrest.’

  Marlowe laughed. ‘Well, that’s been a long time coming,’ he said.

  ‘Didn’t you get my notes?’ Faunt was not his usual cool self.

  ‘Indeed,’ Marlowe nodded. ‘But I didn’t understand any of them. You might as well have given them to Thomas Phelippes or John Dee. They were just about as magical.’

  ‘Well then,’ Faunt said, glancing over his shoulder. ‘No matter. And time for plain speaking. A flunkey called Henry Maunder is on his way here now. He’s a reasonable type but he has his orders. Don’t make trouble, Kit. Go with him and keep your counsel.’

  ‘What counsel?’ Marlowe asked. Faunt was still talking in riddles.

  ‘I wasn’t sent here to watch Tom Walsingham,’ the projectioner said. ‘That was a blind. I was sent by Burghley to watch you.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘And, if necessary, kill you.’

  Marlowe’s mouth hung open.

  ‘I know, I know,’ Faunt waved his hand. ‘We’re none of us indispensable and it’s just as likely that Cecil would give you the order to kill me. That’s our world, Kit Marlowe; we can’t change it.’

  There was a noise of dogs barking up at the house. ‘They’re here, Kit,’ Faunt said. He grabbed the man’s shoulder and held him fast. ‘There’s something you should know,’ he said.

  ‘What?’ Marlowe wasn’t going anywhere.

  ‘The men we work for, the Privy Council inner circle – Burghley, Cecil, Hunsdon, Howard …’

  ‘What about them?’

  ‘They’re all atheists, Kit, like you. They believe their soul dies with their bodies. You said it yourself, didn’t you? Moses was just a conjuror. Christ was just a man. There is no God.’

  ‘I’ve made no secret of my views,’ Marlowe told him.

  ‘No, but they have. Can you imagine what would happen if this got out? Blasphemy is a burning offence, Kit; we all know that. The four most powerful men in the land would go to the fire. The Queen’s government would collapse. No Lord Treasurer. No Spymaster. No Lord High Admiral.’

  ‘These are just titles, Nicholas,’ Marlowe said. ‘They can be replaced.’

  ‘Not quickly enough,’ Faunt said. ‘A rudderless ship of state. The queen couldn’t hold things together. We’d have Spain on our doorstep again, backed by the Irish. There’d be a Puritan witch-hunt of the likes we can’t imagine.’

  There were horsemen on the hill. Faunt saw them. Marlowe saw them. The projectioner swung into the saddle, holding his horse’s rein. ‘They’ll insist you report to them every day,’ Faunt said. ‘Maunder will call them the Star Chamber but it’ll be the four horsemen; no one else. Give me … give me five days. Then get yourself to Deptford, a ship called the Cormorant – its captain owes me a favour. It’ll take you to Scotland, to the court of King James. You’ll be safe there.’ Faunt looked into the man’s eyes. ‘And may the God you don’t believe in keep you safe, Kit Marlowe.’

  And he was gone, galloping away along the moat’s edge back into the morning.

 
; The gallopers fanned out beyond Scadbury’s outer gate. The Semper Eadem fluttered from the pole of the second rider who swerved in to join the first. They had seen the horseman gallop away to the east and there was no point in chasing him. Their target was Christopher Marlowe and he wasn’t going anywhere.

  The riders pulled up at the bottom of the hill, their horses tossing their heads and pawing the ground. The animals had been ridden hard from Whitehall and their flanks were flecked with foam.

  ‘Christopher Marlowe,’ the riders’ leader said, ‘I am Henry Maunder, Her Majesty’s Messenger.’

  ‘Master Maunder,’ Marlowe nodded. The man didn’t deserve a bow.

  ‘I have a warrant for your arrest,’ Maunder told him.

  Marlowe held out his hand and took the scroll. He tore the Queen’s seal from the ribbon and read it. ‘There are no charges here,’ he said, ‘without charges, this is meaningless.’

  ‘I have my orders, sir,’ Maunder said. ‘You are to come with us.’

  ‘Where to?’ Marlowe asked.

  ‘You don’t need to know,’ a truculent guard broke in and Maunder put up a warning hand.

  ‘No need for rudeness. As Master Marlowe so rightly says, there are no specific charges. People want to talk to you, Master Marlowe. That’s all.’

  Marlowe looked at him for a long time, a stare which would make most men quail but which Henry Maunder took like a man.

  ‘So, where?’ Marlowe said.

  ‘The Star Chamber.’

  The Court of the Star Chamber lay buried in the bowels of Whitehall. It had been set up by the first of the Tudors as a secret court and it had a reputation of getting its business done. There were no juries. There were no independent judges. Just the cold, unreasoning face of Tudor law. And justice? Justice had no place in the Star Chamber.

  Henry Maunder had not left Marlowe’s side since Scadbury. He had waited while the playwright packed his bags, saddled his horse and said goodbye to Thomas Walsingham.

  ‘I’ll be back, Thomas,’ Marlowe had said, ‘there’s a poem half-finished in my rooms. I want to add the next verses before too much ink has dried.’