Witch Hammer Read online

  ‘Yes. The play’s the thing,’ said Sledd, slumping. ‘I had it under the wagon . . .’ Suddenly, he brightened. ‘Young Alleyn has it! I gave it to Edward Alleyn.’ The relief brightened his face like the sun coming over a hill.

  ‘And Alleyn is . . .?’ Strange looked around.

  ‘Thomas!’ Sledd yelled. ‘Get Alleyn. Here. Now.’

  All the actors muttered amongst themselves, eavesdropping as they were on the far side of the wagon. Just like Alleyn to get singled out. Always toadying up to the management for the best parts and barely out of his hanging sleeves. They huddled together and muttered some more.

  Thomas looked around him helplessly. Alleyn was nowhere to be seen and now he would have to go and winkle him out. He would have found an inn, a cottage, somewhere where a pretty girl would be giving him food, drink and as much more as he wanted. Thomas sighed and slouched off in the direction of the lane. He hated it when he had to interrupt Alleyn at play.

  ‘He’ll be back with it shortly,’ Sledd said to the two men before him. ‘Have you been planning a production, My Lord? Master Marlowe writes a mighty line.’

  ‘We need to plan something, Ned.’ Ferdinando Stanley might be a bit of a rebel, as the aristocracy went, but he watched his money like any Northerner and didn’t like to see it pouring down a drain. ‘The pennies aren’t coming in, Ned, are they? We need to do something to keep the groundlings in the theatre till the end, so we get their money, don’t you think? We can’t just rely on the food they throw – most of it is definitely past its best by the time it hits the stage.’

  ‘Theatre, sire? We haven’t played in a theatre these past three months. Not since the plague closed them all.’

  ‘Plague?’ Marlowe asked. ‘What plague?’

  Strange shrugged. ‘You know how it is, Kit. Someone sneezes, a few people die, everyone shouts plague and before you know it, London is empty and all the theatres closed.’

  ‘But . . . plague?’ Marlowe asked again. He was no coward, he would face any man with any weapon he might choose, but the plague was a different kettle of fish. There was no sword on earth proof against the plague. He had known people bowed down with the weight of talismans and prophylactic charms who had nevertheless died in days. ‘Plague in London? I was on my way there.’

  ‘Nothing to stop you going,’ Sledd said. ‘The gates are all open as far as I know, but you won’t find anyone still there. Well, no one who is anyone, if patronage is what you’re after.’ He flashed an ingratiating smile in Strange’s direction.

  ‘I’ll have to reconsider my plans,’ Marlowe said.

  ‘No need,’ Strange said, expansively. ‘Join Lord Strange’s Men, Kit. You can act, I suppose?’

  ‘I can’t say that I have ever tried,’ Marlowe said, to an accompanying snort from Sledd. ‘I can sing, if that’s any help.’

  ‘It’s a start,’ Strange said. ‘It’s a start. Can you learn lines?’

  ‘I can write them.’

  ‘Yes, as you say. Now, where is that boy with Alleyn? You have little control over this troupe, Sledd. We must talk.’ He turned to Marlowe. ‘Kit, go for a walk or something, will you? I must talk to Master Sledd here. Privately.’

  Marlowe stood up and bowed. ‘Sire. Ned. I’ll join Thomas in his search for Dido.’

  ‘Alleyn,’ Sledd said, absent-mindedly. ‘The name’s Alleyn, Kit. He gets very funny if you forget his name.’

  Nicholas Faunt had sat in Francis Walsingham’s anteroom for well over an hour. He had served the spymaster now for more years than he cared to remember, but he never got used to the little irritations that Walsingham threw his way. Waiting came with the territory; standing in the pouring rain or the melting snow by a great man’s door. It was the only way to get on.

  Nicholas Faunt had a timepiece – better, he believed, than the Queen’s – and it had cost him a year’s pay. He was just reaching into his doublet to find it when the door crashed back and the man he was waiting for stood there, a quill in his hand and a furrow on his brow. The cares of State had etched themselves into the face of Master Secretary Walsingham and his carefully trimmed beard and moustache were iron grey in the white crispness of his ruff. His eyes, however, still burned for England and they missed nothing.

  ‘Nicholas, dear boy.’ He looked vaguely up and down the corridor. ‘Why wasn’t I told you were here? Come in, come in. How’ve you been?’

  ‘Well, Sir Francis, thank you.’ Faunt was on his feet already, bowing low.

  ‘Enough of that,’ Walsingham chided him. ‘We’ve known each other too long for such niceties.’ He ushered him into the chamber. ‘Er . . . do you smoke?’ Walsingham waved to a pipe rack on the far wall. ‘I can never remember.’

  ‘Can’t abide the stuff,’ Faunt told him, smiling.

  ‘Quite right, quite right. Abominable habit, although they say it’s good for you. Wine, then? I do remember you are partial to a good Rhennish.’

  ‘Thank you, sir. Indeed.’

  Walsingham clicked his fingers and a flunkey appeared from nowhere, wearing the livery of the Queen. He was carrying a tray with two goblets and he laid them down on the low oak table by the leaded window. ‘This isn’t good Rhennish, I’m afraid,’ Walsingham said. ‘It’s a rather indifferent Bordeaux, but in these straitened times . . .’

  ‘I’m sure it will be excellent, Sir Francis.’ Faunt took the goblet. Walsingham took one too and noted that Faunt was waiting for him to take the first sip. He did and jerked his head in the direction of the door. The flunkey bowed and left.

  ‘Now.’ Walsingham ushered Faunt to a chair and looked out of the window at the busy Whitehall day. ‘To business.’ He took in the scarlet-clad guards drilling in the courtyard below, the clerks in their raven black hurrying in pairs with parchment and quills, cooks and scullions and draymen all going about their business in this little world where Walsingham, not Gloriana, ruled. He turned sharply to Faunt, the bonhomie gone, the smile vanished. ‘Marlowe.’

  Faunt put the goblet down. He’d been expecting this for a while, for weeks in fact. And he had hoped, by now, to have prepared a better answer. ‘Gone,’ he said.

  Walsingham’s eyes narrowed and his lips pursed. He sat down opposite his man and sipped from the goblet again. ‘You have an explanation, of course.’ It was a statement, not a question.

  ‘I last saw Marlowe at Corpus Christi College two weeks ago. He had become . . . disenchanted.’

  ‘With Corpus Christi?’

  ‘With life, as far as I could tell.’

  Walsingham sighed. ‘That Delft business.’ He nodded, staring into his cup.

  ‘He is very young,’ Faunt reminded his master.

  ‘You mean we sent a boy to do a man’s job?’ Walsingham’s eyes were fixed on Faunt again, searing into his soul.

  Faunt stared back. ‘I mean it was an impossible job,’ he said in a level tone. It was never a good idea to let Walsingham know he had you rattled, although that state of mind was almost automatic when in the room with the man. For many, it was a state of mind which never left them, day or night.

  There was a silence. Faunt had challenged Sir Francis Walsingham, bearded the Queen’s spymaster in his own den.

  ‘To save the life of the Statholder of the United Provinces; to keep alive a man who was the target of just about everyone in Imperial Spain? Of course it was.’

  ‘I mean, Sir Francis –’ Faunt was warming to his subject – ‘in this great game of ours we all have our failures. We take them on the chin, move on. Fresh fields, pastures new. Marlowe perhaps feels more deeply.’

  Walsingham nodded. He’d been a young man once and a Cambridge scholar too, like Marlowe. As for feeling more deeply, that wasn’t a luxury he could allow himself. ‘So where was he going?’ he asked.

  ‘As I understand it, he was on his way here, to London. Had a hankering to write for the theatre.’

  ‘The theatres are closed,’ Walsingham reminded him. ‘You must be aware, Nichol
as, that there is plague in the city.’

  ‘There is always plague somewhere, Sir Francis,’ Faunt replied. ‘These days I tend to take these constant crises with a good pinch and a half of salt.’

  Walsingham nodded, his enigmatic half smile flickering over his face. ‘Indeed, Nicholas. I do think that the Master of the Revels overreacts occasionally.’

  ‘Marlowe would not have known about the plague, so I assume he is still on his way,’ Faunt said, ‘but I’ve had men watching at the city gates. No sign as yet.’

  Walsingham chewed the ends of his moustache, deep in thought. ‘He’d come from the north. Aldgate. Bishopsgate.’

  Faunt hid his annoyance. ‘I have covered all of the gates, sir,’ he said. ‘In my experience, Dominus Marlowe often does the unexpected. He’s just as likely to come from the south. What are the points of the compass to the man they call Machiavel? And don’t forget, he has family in Kent. Even Christopher Marlowe needs to see his mother, once in a while.’

  A smile crossed Walsingham’s lips and this time stayed a trifle longer. ‘You like him, don’t you?’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ Faunt admitted. ‘As a matter of fact, I do.’

  ‘So do I,’ said Walsingham, nodding. ‘And we can’t afford to lose men like him. Spread your net wider, Master Faunt. Send your people out to the villages. Today is . . . what . . . Thursday? By Monday, I shall expect word on the whereabouts of Machiavel. Are we at one on this?’

  ‘We are, Sir Francis.’

  ‘I’m glad, Nicholas. Losing one man would be bad enough, two would be a disaster. Again, do I make myself plain?’

  Faunt bowed, swigged the rest of his wine and bowed himself out of the room. He had learned long ago that when Sir Francis Walsingham said jump, only a fool lingered to ask how high.

  TWO

  Kit Marlowe had hidden his anxiety well in front of Sledd and Strange, but the thought of rewriting his Dido all over again was almost too much to bear. He had managed to recreate much of the original, lost by Sledd in riots in Cambridge no more than a year before, but some lines were gone for ever, leaving just a ghostly imprint on his soul, but too faint to be grasped and put down on paper. Michael Johns, the fellow of Corpus Christi who had read both versions, and whose opinion Marlowe valued above all others but his own, had told him frankly that the second version had flashes of genius that the first had largely lacked, but Marlowe was not fooled by that. Johns was an honest man, but possibly kinder than honest; he would walk on hot coals rather than hurt another man’s feelings. He would crawl on hot coals, should that other be Kit Marlowe. So the playwright cleared his throat before peering round the corner of the wagon where the actors sat, to make sure his voice wouldn’t give him away.

  ‘Which way did Thomas go?’

  ‘Thomas?’ boomed a voice. It held the tragedy of the world in that one word, which seemed to have taken on extra syllables.

  ‘Yes.’ Marlowe tried not to let his surprise show. It had seemed a rather overblown question, given the subject matter. ‘Thomas. You know him – the lad who plays . . . well, who plays the girls and women.’

  ‘Aaah.’ The voice rumbled and boomed like weeping thunder over a distant mountain range. ‘Thomas.’ This time the syllable fell like the final beat of the drum that signals the end of the world. ‘He went after that fellow, Alleyn. The tragedian. Hah!’ and the voice broke into a peal of humourless laughter, clearly based on the sound of earth on a coffin lid. As heard from the inside.

  Marlowe kept his question short and pithy, to try to avoid more interjections from Job. ‘Which way did he go?’

  One of the young actors leapt up and grabbed Marlowe by the elbow, turning him to face the lane. ‘That way,’ he said, pointing. ‘Through that gap and to the right.’ He dropped his voice. ‘Now clear off and find him. But don’t use the A word, or you’ll only start him off again.’

  Marlowe raised an eyebrow and mouthed, ‘A word?’

  ‘Alleyn,’ the actor mouthed back and moved a few paces further from the group. ‘Old Joseph was the tragedy expert in the troupe until Alleyn joined us. The poor old chap is past his best, I’m afraid. Can’t remember his lines and his legs have started to go. Can’t do the really great tragedy roles with dodgy legs, as I’m sure you agree.’

  Marlowe nodded, making a private note to look closely at the actors’ legs next time he was watching a play. Clearly, he had been missing all kinds of subtleties he didn’t know were there.

  ‘Alleyn is an annoying little tit, but he can do a good speech, you have to give him that, at least. He has them in floods of tears every night and that’s just the men. The women throw all manner of things we try to stop young Thomas getting too good a look at; it’s his balls, you know.’

  ‘So I understand,’ Marlowe said. ‘But, I must be away. Alleyn has my play with him and I . . .’

  ‘Good?’

  ‘Not at all – it’s a disaster. I’ve already rewritten it once, thanks to Ned Sledd.’

  The actor turned him round and looked him up and down. ‘I remember you,’ he said. ‘Cambridge, wasn’t it? That riot . . . that was a night to remember.’

  ‘Yes. But my manuscript . . .’

  ‘I remember. Someone lit a torch with it. Shame – good it was, as I recall. Dido and the . . . something.’

  ‘Dido, Queen of Carthage.’

  ‘No, that wasn’t it. Anyway, if you don’t hurry there’s no telling where Alleyn and the lad will have got to. I wouldn’t trust either of them an inch.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Marlowe said.

  ‘You’re welcome,’ the actor said, with a very theatrical bow. ‘Come back soon and write me something good to say. I’m tired of Ned’s old rubbish, to be frank.’

  ‘I hope I’ll be back soon with Dido, Queen of Carthage,’ Marlowe said.

  ‘No,’ the actor muttered as he turned his back. ‘That’s not it.’

  Marlowe turned his back on the ragbag crew and walked past the wagon where Strange was still giving Sledd a piece of his mind. Overheads apparently needed to be cut and some of the troupe were being let go. Ham was mentioned. Marlowe wanted to be a playwright. He didn’t want to have anything to do with actors; what would be the point of that? He quickened his pace out on to the lane and looked hopefully back and forth, in case Thomas was hurrying towards him, a manuscript in his hand. Marlowe realized he wouldn’t mind if it were to be mud-stained, in the wrong order or even mildly singed at the edges. Just so long as it was back. He had been a fool to let Sledd have it for even a minute. But look though he might, there was no sign of Thomas and he turned to the right and trudged off down the lane. For a moment he toyed with fetching his horse, but hoped that wouldn’t be necessary. How far could the man have gone in the short while since he had first been missed?

  As he walked, his thoughts seemed to get into step with his feet and the desolate boom of the old tragedian’s voice seemed to become the voice in his head. This was no job for an intelligent young man, it seemed to say. Get yourself back off to Cambridge, where you belong. Finish your degree. Get a good job in the College, marry a nice girl while the College rules let you, settle down, stop this stupid nonsense about going to London. And above all, put all thoughts of Francis Walsingham out of your head. These kinds of things aren’t for the likes of you, a humble lad from Canterbury. A pot boy at the Star whose dad makes other people’s boots. Stick with what you know.

  Hold on just a minute, another voice chimed in. He recognized it as that of John Dee, magus to the Queen and in one grey and dusty package at once the wisest and the most frightening person he had ever met. And, just now, the saddest, still mourning his beautiful wife. Don’t listen to this idiot, Dee’s voice said. Find your play, if it is to be found. If you can’t find it, write another. Write one with my Helene in it, but don’t let that spotty boy play her. He’ll not be playing women much longer anyway, the magus said. He’ll be playing with them soon and then where will his pretty treble be? Follow your stars,
Kit Marlowe, and don’t let anyone stop you. You are fire and air.

  Aaah, the tragedian was limbering up in his other ear, don’t let that . . .

  ‘Ow! Master Marlowe! Look where you’re going!’

  Marlowe and his voices were suddenly struck in the chest by an immovable object and before he could refocus his eyes he was flat on his back. Thomas was looking anxiously down at him.

  ‘Are you all right, Master Marlowe?’ the lad asked. ‘You were . . . well, you were talking to yourself, in all kinds of different voices. Until I came round the corner, I was expecting a crowd. Indeed I was.’ He reached down and helped Marlowe up.

  ‘Sorry, Thomas. I was just thinking aloud. As one does, you know.’

  ‘As you do, perhaps,’ Thomas said. ‘I would soon be in trouble if I started doing that kind of thing. People where we go are only too pleased if they can put us away on some trumped-up charge. Talking in tongues, they’d call that. Have us in chains as soon as look at us. Witchcraft, some would say.’

  ‘Thomas.’ Marlowe was making conversation without thinking of what he was saying, so busy was he looking round behind the boy, for the manuscript he was surely hiding behind his back. ‘Thomas, these are modern times. I’m sure no one would put you in chains for talking to yourself.’

  ‘Hmmph!’ Thomas turned his eyes to heaven. ‘Master Marlowe, you live in Cambridge, where everyone is enlightened. Me, I live on the road and by my wits. When my voice goes, I’m finished here. I can’t act at all; I just look good in a dress and can carry off a straw wig. Modern times mean nothing to we folk who live in them. It’s only men like you who can manage modern times.’

  ‘Men like me?’

  ‘Who live through modern times in a place which takes no notice of them as they pass. The rest of us they chew and spit out as they please.’

  ‘But I want to join you, Thomas. I want to be one of the players.’

  ‘If you say so, Master Marlowe,’ Thomas said, with the air of one who seldom wins an argument. ‘Bad news about the play, I’m afraid.’