Queen's Progress Read online

  ‘Ma’am,’ he muttered in his normal voice, ‘Thou art too kind.’

  He had swept so low in his bow that his head was touching the knee of his extravagantly extended left leg. He saw a movement behind him out of the corner of his eye and focused slowly on what might be causing it. Had his cloak been anything but imaginary, it could have been that. Had his rapier been actual steel instead of light and air, it could have been that. But no. It was neither.

  ‘Something to tell me, Master Sledd?’ asked Philip Henslowe.

  TWO

  Since Robert Cecil wasn’t paying for men, the least he could do was to lay on horseflesh. Marlowe’s chestnut had Flanders blood, gentle eyes and two white stockings. It could outpace Sledd’s roan but that was intentional. Robert Cecil had grown up surrounded by power, at Hatfield, at Theobalds, now in Whitehall. Men like him understood the need for hierarchy. Rich men lived in castles, or at least moated manor houses. Poor men didn’t have a pot to piss in. It was the natural order of things. Whoever this Tom Sledd was, he was Marlowe’s man; give him a nag and let him think himself lucky he wasn’t walking.

  Behind the pair as they trotted through the Surrey sunshine, leaving the smoke and stench of London behind, Sledd hauled the rein of a packhorse, laden with struts of wood, coils of rope and a yardstick. A swatch of velvets dangled from the saddlebow, worth more than horse and saddle put together.

  Ralph Roister Doister had left Marlowe’s head as soon as the words had left his lips. When he was a boy, not yet at the King’s School in Canterbury, the taverns of the town were agog with the ghastly news from Europe. The Protestants of Paris had been butchered in an orgy of killing, slaughtered by a female monster whose name was whispered in the Star and the Shepherd’s Crook. She was Catherine de Medici, an Italian who ruled France, and she ate babies for breakfast. She had ordered an entire church congregation to be rounded up in a city square and she had sat, gurgling with delight as her minions sauntered along the kneeling, praying victims, cutting their throats so that the cobbles ran with blood. And it had to be true – all the Huguenot weavers along the Stour knew it for a fact.

  It had not been a fit subject for a pot boy at an inn, but such things could not be hidden. One man in particular, Marlowe remembered, had looked him up and down and said, ‘These are troubled times, boy. When you grow up and grow old, as you will, another generation will be there, asking you if there ever was a massacre in Paris.’ The man had moved closer, pressing his nose against Marlowe’s so that the beer on his breath filled the air. ‘And you tell them,’ he growled, ‘Tell them for those of us who won’t still be around then. You tell them, yes; there was.’

  And the massacre in Paris was in his head now, the screams and the oaths, the clash of steel and the sudden awfulness of death. It all seemed so incongruous on this late May morning, the sun already high, the shade of the new leaves dappling the grass. He glanced across at Sledd. The man was no country bumpkin but he had a stalk of grass between his teeth and chewed the end of it, like the rangy cattle they trotted past.

  A hunting horn brought them both up sharp and they reined in. The packhorse ambled to a grateful stop with a creak of harness and ungreased wheel. Ahead of them, the ground sloped away down to a lake, dark and brooding under a fringe of firs, and horsemen were cantering across the meadow, their animals sending up clouds of dust. Had it ever rained in this country, Marlowe wondered.

  There were shouts and whistles, the jingle of bits and bridle bells. ‘There!’ Sledd shouted. From the knot of horsemen, a hawk sliced the air like an arrow, thudding into a wood pigeon that squawked once and tumbled to the ground in a wild spray of blood and flying feather.

  ‘Hawks and doves,’ Marlowe murmured, but Sledd didn’t hear him.

  ‘That’s a fine bird, Kit,’ he said as the kestrel scythed in a wide arc and circled back to the gloved wrist of its keeper.

  ‘It was,’ said Marlowe. He was looking at the broken pigeon, still trying to flap on the ground. He nudged the chestnut forward and slid from the saddle. For an instant, he cradled the dying bird, smoothing the ruffled feathers and looking into its eye, misted with pain. Then, quickly and without a sound, he broke its neck.

  ‘Oi!’ A shout made him turn and a trio of beaters with snapping dogs on leashes were hurrying over to him. ‘What’re you doing? That’s Mistress Blanche’s bird, that is.’

  ‘I rather fancy it’s nobody’s bird now,’ Marlowe said, holding the pigeon out towards them, its head dangling from his palm.

  ‘You’re trespassing,’ another beater said. ‘This is private land.’

  Marlowe looked at the three. They bristled with weapons, cudgels and knives stuffed into belts over their brigandines. One had a bow slung over his shoulder, his quiver stuffed with goose-feather arrows. ‘Is this the estate of Sir Walter Middleham?’

  ‘It is,’ the first man said. ‘And you’ve no right to be on it.’

  Marlowe reached into his purse and held up the Queen’s cypher, letting the silver flash in the sun. ‘Recognize this, lickspittle?’ he asked.

  The man blinked. Any Englishman born, and a good few foreigners too, knew that cypher, the dragon and the greyhound flanking the arms of England and France. There was a thud of hoofs and the whinny of a horse and a woman cantered over the hillside, hauling her reins within feet of Marlowe. Her grey snorted and shook its head, sending flecks of foam through the air.

  ‘What’s the trouble here, Fitch?’

  The spokesman of the three tugged off his pickadil and nodded briefly. ‘These two are trespassing, my lady. That one,’ he pointed at Marlowe, ‘just broke your bird’s neck.’

  The woman looked down at the handsome stranger in the black velvet, with a dead pigeon in one hand and the queen’s cypher in the other. The sheen on his sleeve and the sheen of the dead bird’s feathers made a pretty sight, his liquid eyes more so.

  ‘Not my bird, Fitch,’ she said, raising an eyebrow. ‘Just one of God’s creatures that ran out of luck.’

  Another rider joined her, a thin, rather pale boy with freckles. ‘What’s going on?’ His voice was petulant, and if Marlowe had been asked to guess he would have said, and rightly, that this was the son of the house, and not half the man his sister was at that.

  ‘Don’t fret yourself, brother,’ the woman said. ‘This gentleman has done one of God’s creatures a kindness. I am waiting for him to introduce himself.’

  Marlowe threw the bird to Fitch and swept off his plumed hat, bowing low. ‘Christopher Marlowe, my lady,’ he said. ‘At your service. And this is my man, Thomas Sledd.’

  Tom Sledd had never really thought of himself as anybody’s man, not even Kit Marlowe’s, but it was too early in the day to rattle cages and to remind everybody that Tom is as good as his master. He too doffed his cap.

  ‘Master Marlowe,’ the woman’s face softened and she gave a tinkling laugh. ‘You’re Master Tilney’s man – the Master of the Revels.’

  Tom Sledd couldn’t help smirking. It was Marlowe’s turn to be placed in the straitjacket of hierarchy. It actually made no sense – Edmund Tilney had the discernment of a bedpan. What the Queen’s Master of Revels knew about drama could be written on a pinhead, around the feet of the dancing angels. But nevertheless, in this mad world of Gloriana, he was Marlowe’s master and no mistake.

  ‘That I am,’ Marlowe said, and only Tom Sledd could hear the hidden message in his tone. ‘And you are?’

  She laughed again. ‘I am Blanche Middleham,’ she said. She nodded at the pale youth. ‘My brother James.’

  Marlowe bowed again but the simp in the saddle barely moved.

  ‘We must be getting back,’ he said to his sister. ‘Grandfather …’

  Blanche held up her hand. ‘Master Marlowe has ridden far,’ she said, taking up her reins and patting the grey’s neck. ‘The least we can do is make him welcome. James, be a darling and ride to the Hall, will you? Tell Mason we have a guest for the foreseeable future. And tell him to fi
nd an outhouse for his man.’

  Tom Sledd frowned. Two days ago, he was looking forward to a knighthood, the Queen’s rapier tickling his shoulder. Now, he was Marlowe’s man, consigned to sleeping with the hogs.

  ‘I—’ he began, but Marlowe cut him off.

  ‘Delighted,’ he said. ‘And thank you, Master Middleham.’

  The boy snorted and wheeled his horse away. Blanche leaned low over her horse’s neck. ‘Better go with him, Fitch. You know how badly he rides when he’s in a temper.’

  There were rumbled guffaws all round and Lady Blanche adjusted her hat, placing the peacock plum just so at a jaunty angle on her pale golden hair. ‘Will you ride with me, Master Marlowe?’ she asked. ‘I want to show you the lake.’

  ‘The lake?’ Tom Sledd was lacing his best doublet. No expense had been spared at Farnham Hall that night. It was not every summer that the Queen came to Henry of Blois’ castle and graced the Middlehams with her Presence. And the Queen’s man deserved the best too, so dinner had been announced. ‘The bloody lake?’ He said it again, because clearly Marlowe hadn’t heard him. He was slipping a small sheathed dagger up his sleeve.

  ‘You were there,’ Marlowe reminded him, ‘when Lady Blanche was planning the masque.’

  The stage manager stopped wrestling with the points. Why couldn’t gentlemen use buttons like everybody else? ‘Yes, I was there,’ he said, his voice rising as it always did when he was annoyed. ‘But Lady Blanche was so taken with you, she delivered everything at a whisper, about an inch from your ear. Did you notice that? Only, I did, because I couldn’t hear a bloody word.’

  Marlowe chuckled. ‘Ladies don’t shout, Tom,’ he said. ‘It’s beneath them.’ He frowned suddenly. ‘Taken with me? Was she?’

  ‘Plain as the nose on your face,’ Sledd said, restarting the tying, having dried his sweating fingers on the seat of his venetians. ‘Quite a looker too, if you ask me.’

  ‘I didn’t.’ Marlowe was rummaging for his gloves. ‘I thought married men such as yourself had no eye for another.’

  ‘I can look, if I don’t touch.’ Master Sledd knew the leeway he was allowed. ‘But, no, well, I mean … You could do all right there, Kit. Her grandfather seems to own half of Hampshire and she’s got an arse on her like—’

  ‘I bow to your judgement, Thomas,’ Marlowe said, firmly. ‘But that’s not why we’re here, is it? For me to settle my pension plan.’

  ‘Er … no.’ Sledd frowned, realizing he had overstepped some kind of mark; though precisely what that mark was, he wasn’t sure. ‘No, indeed.’

  ‘We are here to provide entertainment for Her Majesty. Ten barges on the lake, filled with water nymphs, three fountains, a magic grotto, suitably lit with torches for the evening. Oh, and at least thirty musicians, heavy on the flutes and hautbois.’ He leaned over and closed Tom Sledd’s gaping mouth with a gentle finger. It was hard to stay annoyed with him for long; the man carried the ghost of the boy on his shoulder and he had never had a mean thought in his life. He was a rare bird in theatreland indeed. ‘Any problems with that?’

  The theatre manager shook his head. ‘No, no problem with that.’ He was all at sea when he was out of London, but he couldn’t imagine that this arse-end of the country was exactly filled with lads who could double as water nymphs, or with musicians who could do more than make rough music with the tongs and the bones. There were few problems on a stage he couldn’t fix; perhaps this would be the same. Muttering, he wandered off, his hands up before his face, squaring off lakes, fountains and grottoes in the air, trailing still unfastened laces.

  Marlowe smiled and watched him go. The more Tom was immersed in his staging, the less likely he would be to notice if there was skulduggery afoot. And that would all be to the good. Although Tom Sledd was no more loose-lipped than the next man, and less so than many, he tended to wear his emotions across his face and that wouldn’t help at all. No – let him plan his fountains and his nymphs and, who knew, he might even succeed.

  Farnham Hall was large, draughty and had seen much better days. The great keep had been built by Henry of Blois, the Bishop of Winchester, in the days when Stephen fought Matilda for the crown of England. A vicious, war-torn land it was then, a time to hide behind tons of stone and mortar, to take refuge behind walls. But that was then. The days of Gloriana, or so Lord Burghley said, had brought light and freedom and peace. Nobody built castles any more, if only because the Queen’s cannon could knock them down like skittles. The Hall that the Middlehams had built in the days of King Hal lay below it, pretentious in its own way, with half-timbering and new brick, a gateway out of proportion to the wings and a half-hearted fountain of the Italian style playing before it. No one used the keep any more, except the pigs that rooted in the tangled mass of ivy and willowherb that all but choked the old stones, snuffling and snorting where Henry of Blois once kept his court.

  Trestles had been set up in the banqueting hall, and candles were spaced frugally along them, leaving many of the diners more or less in the dark. Somewhere in the gloom, Marlowe knew, Tom Sledd would be rubbing shoulders with the lesser tenants of the estate. It had taken some doing, but he had finally managed to explain to the steward that Tom was not his manservant, that he should not be lodged in a stable somewhere. It had been touch and go until he had eventually made it clear that no room for him, no masque for the Queen. After that, it had been more or less plain sailing. The room he had been given was not wonderful, but it was inside the house and had an actual bed in it, rather than a few bales of straw. The mattress was lumpy, the hangings full of cobwebs and – according to Tom at least – several bats, whose baleful twitterings could just be heard over the rustle of the rats in the wainscoting. But, as Marlowe had told him he should be, he was grateful for small mercies.

  Marlowe was at the top table with the family and some of the more important tenants of the estate, primarily those who paid the rent on time, a small and honoured clique. He was between Blanche and her grandfather, a man so old and crumpled he looked as though he had been left out in the rain. Although his clothes were rich and sumptuous, they came from an earlier time and also seemed to have been made for a much bigger man. The old man’s head emerged from the elaborate ruff and velvet ruching like a tortoise from its shell, his eyes small and rheumy, his skull clearly visible beneath the skin straining over his temples. He had been introduced by his granddaughter in what Marlowe thought was an unnecessarily perfunctory manner – ‘Grandfather,’ she had announced with an airy wave of her hand as the scion of the house was eased into his seat by two burly retainers. Marlowe had bowed and smiled but the response was disappointing. The only emotion that the old man showed was when the food began to arrive, and then there was a glint in his sunken eye.

  Wheaten loaves were distributed down the table by serving maids and they were followed by kitchen boys bearing tureens. Each guest, whether they wanted it or not, was served with a ladleful of what Marlowe’s nose told him was hare, so very gamey that the smell was on the edge of repulsive rather than pleasant. The old man nudged the playwright in the ribs with a razor-sharp elbow.

  ‘Pass the bread,’ he grated. ‘I must sop the gravy if I am to eat tonight. This hare has bones in it that no hare has in its body. It’s rat, rat, say …’ He subsided back into his clothes a little further, furtive eyes flashing left and right.

  Marlowe reached for the loaf in front of him but his wrist was gripped in Blanche’s muscular fist.

  ‘Who is that bread for, Master Marlowe?’ she hissed.

  ‘Umm …’ Marlowe was in a cleft stick. It seemed so impolite to refer to the old man as ‘grandfather’ and yet, what else was he to call him, as he had not been introduced. He settled for a gesture to his left.

  She grabbed the bread from him and leaned forward, glaring at the old man. ‘Grandfather,’ she snapped. ‘How many times must you be told? White bread gives you bad dreams. Not to mention wind.’ She smiled like a basilisk at Marlowe. ‘Poor, dear old
soul,’ she gushed. ‘He forgets he isn’t twenty any more.’ She leaned forward again. ‘Your gruel will be along shortly, Grandfather,’ she screamed at the top of her voice. ‘Your gruel. Along shortly.’ She turned again to Marlowe, sitting wide eyed and stunned by having her scream in his ear. ‘Poor lamb,’ she said, ‘deaf as a stile. But a dear old soul, of course. James and I would be lost without him.’ She turned around and clicked her fingers at a serving boy, who approached at a fawning crouch.

  ‘Yes, Mistress Blanche?’

  ‘Were you the fool who gave the hare to the Master?’

  The boy shook his head, but she cuffed him on the ear even so.

  ‘Take it away and bring his gruel.’ She turned back to Marlowe. ‘Imbecile!’ she said. He assumed that she meant the lad, but was not absolutely sure. He turned back to the chelonian on his left. He was running his finger around the edge of the pool of gravy on his plate, where a scum of grease was already forming. With a quivering hand, he raised the glutinous digit to his mouth, but by the time it got there, all but a trace had gone, flying off in all directions and going who knew where. Marlowe, looking down onto his own plate and noticing some alien gobbets, pushed his hare away and decided that hunger was the better part of valour.

  The elbow hit him in the ribs again, exactly on the spot still stinging from the time before. He leaned across slightly. He didn’t need another lesson to tell him that Blanche would be best left out of any communications he had with the Master of Farnham.

  ‘When the fish comes round, laddie,’ he grated in Marlowe’s ear, ‘push a bit to the side of your plate so I can pick at it.’ Marlowe reflected that he had rarely had such an appetizing request. ‘But scrape the ginger off it. It makes me cough and she’ll know I’m eating it.’