The Reckoning Read online

  ‘Who?’ Marlowe wasn’t quite sure he’d heard.

  ‘John Foxe,’ the actor said. ‘With an “e”.’

  ‘What have you done?’ Marlowe asked. ‘Would I have seen you in anything?’

  ‘Ralph Roister Doister,’ the actor said proudly.

  Marlowe grimaced. Everybody had done Ralph Roister Doister. ‘Anything good?’ he asked.

  Foxe smiled. ‘Tamburlaine,’ he said.

  Marlowe sat up straighter. ‘Really? Where?’

  ‘For the Queen,’ Foxe told him. ‘At Nonsuch, two years ago. When my Lord Chamberlain announced the tour, I leapt at the chance, Master Marlowe. And may I say what an honour it is …?’

  ‘Yes, well, of course. Tamburlaine, eh? What did you think of the Scythian shepherd?’

  ‘A part to die for, if I’m any judge. There is one thing, though. I understood from my Lord Chamberlain that we were doing The Spanish Tragedy. But only yesterday, I heard … I didn’t realize …’

  ‘Nobody does,’ Marlowe smiled. ‘Tell me, Master Foxe, can you keep a secret?’

  ‘But there’s nothing wrong with it!’ Tom Kyd was insisting. It was largely the ale talking. In his heart of hearts, he knew the Spanish Tragedy needed work, but Ned Alleyn was a man who got right up his nose and Kyd was a man who didn’t take criticism well.

  ‘Oh, come on, Kyd,’ Alleyn sneered, a girl on each arm. ‘It’s unworkable. I do have a reputation.’ He winked at the blowsier one on his left.

  ‘I can see that,’ Kyd muttered.

  ‘John, you’re a new face to us,’ Alleyn called across the table. ‘Honestly, what do you think?’

  Foxe held up both hands, faced as he was with the theatre’s greatest tragedian and a tall, gangly playwright on the defensive. ‘And it’s precisely because I’m new, I have no comment,’ he laughed. ‘You boys work it out.’

  Tonight wasn’t the time for serious conversation. Mrs Isam’s Ordinary in Dowgate had opened its slightly grubby doors to the gentlemen and players of the Lord Chamberlain’s Men and the ale and the women flowed freely. Tom Sledd was happily married, but parties like this, before a troupe took to the road, had no rules. Everybody knew that the next couple of weeks would be hard, even assuming they actually had a play to perform and letting down a little hair in Dowgate wouldn’t come amiss. So Tom Sledd slumped in a corner with one of Mrs Isam’s girls on his lap.

  Kit Marlowe sat in another corner, his back to the wall as it so often was. His was a difficult situation. Tom Kyd was not just a friend; the pair shared lodgings in Hog Lane. He knew that Alleyn was right, but he couldn’t say it openly. A balding man slumped into the chair next to him. What little hair he had curled over his ears and the little goatee beard he had recently allowed to grow longer was pomaded to perfection.

  ‘It is December, isn’t it?’ he asked Marlowe.

  ‘It is,’ Marlowe confirmed, catching the glazed look in the man’s eye. ‘And you’re William Shaxsper and one day you’ll be a passingly average playwright. Perhaps.’

  ‘Huh!’ Shaxsper grunted. ‘Better than Kyd, anyway.’ And he smiled at what he assumed to be the man across the smoke-filled room and raised his cup in a toast.

  ‘Now, Will,’ Marlowe chuckled. ‘You know I couldn’t possibly comment. Why are you asking what month it is?’

  ‘Well, correct me if I’m wrong,’ Shaxsper was trying to light his pipe but the damned thing wouldn’t keep still, ‘but who in their right minds takes a show on the road in the middle of winter? We won’t be home until Twelfth Night.’

  ‘Two things,’ Marlowe had been patronizing Shaxsper for years now; he was getting pretty good at it. ‘First,’ he held his colleague’s tinder box steady, ‘there is still plague floating over the city and our own, our very own, Master of the Revels might close the theatres on a whim any moment. Second,’ the flame burst into life, blinding Shaxsper temporarily and singeing his beard, ‘oh, sorry.’ Marlowe patted at the falling specks of burning hair that settled on Shaxsper’s burgeoning paunch, ‘Second, the Lord Chamberlain is only now putting his aristocratic toe in the theatrical waters – damn, the metaphor thing again – and he doesn’t want it noised abroad in London. The man’s a Puritan.’

  ‘Aren’t we all?’ Shaxsper puffed gratifyingly on his pipe-stem as the smoke drifted upwards. He was smiling and nodding at Alleyn drowning in women and John Foxe cavorting with a dark-haired beauty.

  ‘Indeed,’ Marlowe smiled. ‘And talking of that, how is Mistress Shaxsper and all the little Shaxspers?’

  ‘Well, as far as I know,’ the Warwickshire man told him. ‘Susannah’s ten now. Stratford seems eternity ago. Where have all the years gone, eh?’

  ‘Where indeed?’ Marlowe nodded.

  A solid-looking walking gentleman loomed over Shaxsper, looking down at him. ‘Is this right, Will?’ he asked.

  ‘Is what right?’

  ‘That we’re going to Croydon? Bloody Croydon?’

  Shaxsper and Marlowe looked at the man. They had no idea that Ingram Frizer had such an aversion to Surrey. Frizer may have had a few already, but he caught their look of surprise. ‘Let’s just say,’ he tapped the side of his nose, ‘that Nicholas and I …’ on cue, his friend Skeres arrived, ‘… are not exactly welcome in that borough.’

  ‘… On account,’ Skeres explained, ‘that the last view we had of it was from the cart’s tail …’

  ‘… where we had been tied, on wrongful charges, of course, by an over-zealous Constable of the Watch …’

  ‘… who in turn was working at the behest of a rather Calvinistic Archbishop of Canterbury who has always, I understand, had rather a soft spot for Croydon …’

  ‘All this is fascinating,’ Marlowe said, breaking into their flawless narrative, ‘but Croydon isn’t our idea. You’d have to talk to the Lord Chamberlain.’

  ‘Oh, right,’ grunted Frizer. ‘I’ll just pop round and see him. Hold my drink for a moment, would you?’

  ‘Well, his man’s here,’ the playwright told him. ‘Master Foxe … oh, too late, I fear.’

  John Foxe was making his way a little unsteadily up the rickety stairs to the first landing, guided tipsily by the flame-haired girl.

  ‘Anyway,’ there weren’t many conversations of a theatrical nature that Tom Sledd didn’t manage to overhear. He held a girl’s head out of his way. ‘You don’t have to go, you know. Walking gentlemen like you and Skeres are ten to a groat; know what I mean?’

  ‘Did you hear that, Nicholas?’ Frizer stood to his full five foot three.

  ‘I did, Ingram,’ Skeres was a head taller, ‘and I am frankly appalled.’

  Marlowe and Shaxsper laughed. This was what it was all about, what drove them to the wooden O every day – the camaraderie of the cast, the fellowship of the fair.

  And the ale flowed and the smoke drifted and the laughter echoed into the night.

  The rats along the river lifted their noses and smelt the dawn. The tide at Dowgate was on the turn and the eddies whirled along the jetties and rope-moorings of the Queen’s wharves. There was no light yet on this December morning and the Night Watch had long ago hung up their lanterns and blown their candles out.

  Tom Sledd was already cursing himself for the amount he’d drunk the night before. This was nothing new, but every time he promised himself he wouldn’t do it. He was stage manager of the Rose – next to the Lord Mayor of London there wasn’t a higher office in the capital. And in the pursuance of that office he had to wake everybody up ready for an early start on the road. Pack horses didn’t pack themselves; neither did wagons load their own flats.

  One by one, he kicked them into life. Skeres and Frizer had forgotten all about their fear of Croydon and the slight they’d received from Sledd. They growled at him as they felt his patten thud into their respective backsides, slumped as they were over the furniture. Shaxsper still cradled his pipe, head down on a table. Alleyn wasn’t there; neither were Marlowe and Kyd. They’d be upstairs in reasonably sof
t beds with bugs and, in Alleyn’s case certainly, at least two women to keep them warm.

  Sledd rapped on the first door he came to. No answer. No surprises there, then. He lifted the latch. John Foxe was lying on his back in the middle of the tester and the room was lit only by the light that Sledd had brought with him, a candle that guttered in the sudden draught. ‘John?’

  Nothing.

  ‘Master Foxe?’ Louder this time, more formal. There was no telling with actors – if they thought you were being too familiar, they would ignore you without batting an eye. ‘Oh, for the love of …’ Sledd hauled the covers off the man. Foxe didn’t move. He was pinned to the mattress by a blade, the tip of which protruded through his chest. Dark brown blood had run from his sternum down both sides of his naked body. His arms were by his side, slightly splayed out. Sledd’s heart was thumping in his chest, his bleary eyes suddenly sharp and focussed in the half light. He held the candle close to the dead man’s face. Foxe’s eyes were wide open, staring at the ceiling as though in disbelief. His lips were peeled back from his teeth in a terrible grin, as though John Foxe, in his last moments, had recognized an old friend and was happy to see him.

  ‘Jesus!’ Sledd was not a religious man but he crossed himself now and stumbled backwards. After the name of his Lord, there was only one name he could think of. ‘Kit!’ he shouted. ‘Kit Marlowe! Where the Hell are you?’

  TWO

  Marlowe stood in the doorway, peering in as Sledd had done but without the shock of the new – although a dead body is never pleasant, being told by a gibbering stage manager that one was to be found in the third room on the left made it easier to handle. Foxe still stared at the ceiling, his bright hair somehow dulled and the same colour as the rusty blood which pooled beneath him and ran in a thin stream from one corner of his grimacing mouth. Watching where he trod, Marlowe crossed the room and threw back the curtains which had been pulled roughly across the window.

  The thin, cold light of a winter’s dawn flooded the room and bounced off the dry surfaces of the dead man’s staring eyes and his bared teeth, giving highlights which Tom Sledd and his limelight would have died to achieve. The tip of the dagger, wickedly sharp, glinted at the man’s chest, like a diamond brooch in the cleavage of a duchess.

  Marlowe looked around the room, standing in the window bay. The noise from the street was growing, but even so, it seemed dulled by the dead man on the bed, who drew all attention. He was dressed in just a shirt, the rest of his clothes thrown anyhow all over the room, the jerkin across the foot of the bed, his hose on a chair, his venetians on the floor, the legs akimbo. Marlowe could retrace his last actions just from this. One leg of the breeches was near the door, pushed aside as Sledd had opened it. The other was near the bed, as if Foxe had shed them a leg at a time, as he strode into the room. But why was he so excited to be there? Who could have been with him?

  Marlowe’s eyes flickered from side to side and he lifted the jerkin with finger and thumb. He smiled wryly. The Bishop of Winchester’s Geese were well versed in the arts of love but no one had ever called them tidy. A lacy nothing that had once enhanced a milk white bosom was caught up in the buttons and when he lifted it to his nose, it brought with it a scent of patchouli and exotic flowers. It was an unusual scent and one he had smelled before. He would follow that clue later. If he had guessed right, the lady in question wouldn’t be going anywhere until well after noon.

  He bent over the body and looked at it carefully. There was no sign of any injury except the one, single thrust which had emerged through the man’s chest. The look of amazement on his face showed that he had not expected this, that he had not been arguing with anyone, was in nothing but a happy state of anticipation, now gone, leaving nothing but wrinkles behind, dangling between his thighs. He had run into the room, shedding his clothes as he went and then had fallen onto a knife.

  Marlowe straightened up and stroked his chin. Unless there were a dozen knives hidden in the bedclothes, how could he have fallen just by luck – or bad luck, perhaps that should be? Carefully, the playwright felt along the bed, patting the covers gently in case more blades were waiting. But there was nothing. The other question was how the knife had stayed upright. If it had just been propped in the feather bed, then as soon as the actor fell on it, it would simply be flattened; it most certainly wouldn’t have gone through his chest like a hot knife through butter, no matter how sharp it was.

  He knelt by the bed and doubled over, so he could look beneath it. Mistress Isam, though no doubt a woman of parts, was no housekeeper and here she had done Marlowe a service. There was a track in the thick dust to a point just below where the dead man lay. A few drops of congealed blood hung on the bed strings, like a grisly stalactite. The gleam of a knife handle showed where it had been twisted into the stringing, a cat’s cradle of death. Marlowe tested the tension. The knife was held tight in the tangle, pushed up through the mattress. Before Foxe had fallen back onto it, it would have been hidden in the plump depths of Mistress Isam’s best goose down. It was ingenious, there was no doubt about that. All Marlowe needed to find out now was why – or perhaps the question was more a case of ‘how’ – Foxe had thrown himself back to his death.

  The house where the playwright found himself was in a short alley off The Vintry, one of many that leaned in at the upper storey so that gable almost touched gable, blocking out the light. The girls in residence changed with the wind, but there were usually at least six at any one time, some living there permanently, others by the hour. Sometimes it was by the minute; the staying power of their visiting gentlemen had a lot to do with that. The door was opened by a bleary-eyed blonde, with her breasts exposed in her open gown.

  She looked Marlowe up and down and bit back her snappy retort. It wasn’t often that one of his stamp knocked on this door. Here was one she wouldn’t throw out in a hurry. She rearranged her deshabille to look more like art than accident and smiled. ‘How can I help you?’ she asked, fondling a nipple casually. She had found that a nice pink, perky nipple could often seal the deal, especially with the young ones.

  ‘Is Moll in?’ he said, looking into her eyes, much to her surprise.

  ‘Moll?’ She stopped in mid-fondle and tucked her breasts away. ‘She had a special last night, far as I know. Don’t know if she’s back yet.’

  Marlowe smiled. ‘Could you go and see?’ A coin had suddenly materialized between his fingers and he twirled it absentmindedly.

  The blonde made as if to release her breasts again and he stopped her with a raised hand. ‘No, really, I’ve had a sufficiency. But if you could fetch Moll, I would be grateful.’ The coin stopped its spinning and she held out her hand.

  ‘I’ll fetch her,’ she said, catching the coin as it fell. ‘Come through here and if she’s in the house, she will be here in a moment.’ Never had a groat been earned so easily.

  She went through a door in the back wall of the room she led him into. All around the walls were soft couches, with much used cushions, flattened by the activity of many bodies. Some men just didn’t have the time or money for privacy, but that was no reason not to get comfy. Marlowe lowered himself gingerly onto a couch and sat as upright as possible. Some of the geese, he knew, could strike like a cobra and he didn’t want to be mistaken for something he wasn’t. He heard the blonde shouting from the room beyond the door.

  ‘Moll!’ Then a pause. ‘Moll? You up there?’

  Silence.

  ‘Moll? Anybody?’

  A voice from above answered, but he couldn’t hear the words.

  ‘Well, get her down here now. There’s …’ she dropped her voice and even Marlowe’s keen ear couldn’t catch what she said. Then, louder, ‘Yes. That’s what I said. Just tip a jug of water over her if that’s what it takes.’

  Then the door opened again and a blonde head peered round it.

  ‘She’ll be down in a moment, Master … umm?’

  Marlowe smiled. ‘Thank you,’ he said.

&n
bsp; She came into the room. ‘Are you … comfortable?’ she said, with a predatory gleam in her eye.

  ‘Quite comfortable, thank you.’ Marlowe sat more upright, trying to make his lap as unwelcoming as he could.

  ‘You wouldn’t have to pay again,’ she said. ‘It’s all part of the service.’ She reached into her bodice once more. Her breasts were on and off stage more often than any walking gentleman.

  The door behind her swung open and a girl slid in. Next to the blowsy blonde, her dark looks were delicate and finely drawn. She was tiny, with a pointed chin and large, brown eyes like a doe. Like the deer, her skin was freckled as a thrush’s breast and her clothes were discreet and, to Marlowe’s relief, modestly drawn up to her chin. There was only a finite amount of breasts that anyone could take so early in the morning and Marlowe had exceeded that some time ago.

  ‘Master Marlowe!’ Moll came into the room on a gust of patchouli and exotic flowers. ‘How can I help you?’

  The blonde took herself off on a resounding snort. She never would see how that tart Moll was so successful with the gentlemen. There was nothing to her. No wonder she wore clothes that didn’t show anything; she had hardly anything to show. And yet, she had had more gentlemen than any other of the girls in the house, at better prices, too. And all of them had all their teeth, eyes and limbs – something the other girls could only dream about. Except Nancy, but then she did make something of a speciality of men with bits missing. Popular with the sailors, was Nancy.

  Marlowe and Moll waited until the door had closed and he answered her question. ‘You can tell me about last night, Moll,’ he said gently.

  She tossed a raven curl. ‘That’s not like you, Master Marlowe,’ she said. ‘Wanting dirty talk.’

  He frowned. ‘You know that’s not what I mean, Moll,’ he said, sternly. ‘I want to know how Master Foxe comes to be as dead as mutton, impaled on a knife in one of Mistress Isam’s best bedrooms.’

  ‘It’s no good looking at me like that, Master Sledd.’ Eliza Isam was not a woman to be put off when her dander was well and truly up. ‘I don’t suppose a fine gentleman like yourself would know how much a fine goose feather mattress costs, but let me tell you, it’s more than I am prepared to spend, just because one of your actors chooses to bleed all over it. I’ve had all sorts over my best goose feather mattresses, let me tell you, but never …’