Crimson Rose Read online

  Arriving at the theatre, he had to battle his way through the line of people who had arrived early to be sure of a seat. Sellers of various sweet meats and drinks were patrolling, selling from trays around their necks. Most of them worked for Philip Henslowe and had been pulled in to do extra shifts to cater to the queue. They usually sold food at the bear and dog fights, so this was much more pleasant, as well as being in daylight, a nice change for once. He paused to buy a pie from a seller who looked marginally cleaner than the others. He hoped the pie was younger than the stories he had heard backstage at the Rose had implied. It tasted all right, so he trusted to luck.

  He was licking his fingers to clean up the gravy when he arrived at the orchestra gallery. The musicians were there, tuning up their instruments and arguing about what to practise. The tambour player, never as exercised over the music as the rest, was sitting at the back staring into space, hitting himself on the head now and again with his instrument. He was chewing on an empty pipe and looked as though he hadn’t a brain in his head. The theorbo player was trying to restring his instrument single-handedly and was failing miserably. Without a second person to keep the tension on the incredibly thick strings, he couldn’t get them wound around the peg properly and although he kept tutting and looking around hopefully, no one was taking any notice of him. Marlowe thought that this may be a way to start the conversation.

  ‘Can I help you, er … Barnaby, isn’t it?’

  The man stopped his tutting and smiled with pleasure. ‘It is, Master Marlowe. Fancy you remembering.’ He pulled a triumphant face at the crumhorn player, which said, Look at me. The playwright knows my name.

  ‘What do I have to do?’

  ‘If you could just hold this end, Master Marlowe, sir, while I wrap the string round the peg. If no one helps me –’ he looked pointedly at the tambour player who remained oblivious – ‘I won’t be done when the play starts.’

  Marlowe held the end of the string in place and watched while the theorbo player deftly threaded and tensioned his string.

  ‘Thank you,’ Barnaby said. ‘I just have to tune it now.’

  There was a snort from the shawm player. ‘Tune! Hark at him. He wouldn’t know a tune if it bit him in the leg.’

  Barnaby, who by carting his enormous instrument around had developed rather startling muscles, feinted a step forward, causing the crumhorn player to hide behind Marlowe. ‘At least I always turn up, for rehearsals and performances,’ he said, peering round Marlowe to catch the woodwind player’s eye.

  ‘I always turn up,’ the man retorted. ‘I’m here, aren’t I?’

  ‘You are now,’ sneered Barnaby. ‘But where were you on the first performance? The one where the woman got shot. The one where Miles here swallowed that fly.’

  A snort from the drummer let them know that he was not dead, but merely on another plane. ‘That was funny, Miles,’ he said. ‘I dropped my clapper, I was laughing that hard.’

  Miles grinned. There was no point denying it. Once he had coughed up the fly, he had seen the funny side. But he could have died.

  Marlowe stopped them. He was a musician, although only a despised vocalist. He knew these arguments could run for weeks. ‘Can we just get everything straight for a moment?’ he said. ‘Before you get all creative on me, no one is in trouble. I just need to get a few things sorted out. It’s for Master Shakespeare.’

  ‘I hear that Constable’s looking for him,’ Barnaby chanced.

  ‘I heard he’d caught him and strung him up.’ The crumhorn player was a misery by nature.

  ‘No, no, now will you listen for a moment?’ Marlowe said. ‘Then you can get back to your rehearsal. I need to talk to you about that first performance. The one where the woman was shot.’

  ‘The one where old Miles swallowed a fly.’

  ‘The one where you weren’t here,’ Marlowe said, turning to the crumhorn player. ‘What’s your name, by the way? Gerard, is it?’

  The musician nodded sullenly.

  ‘So, if you weren’t here, how did the rest of the orchestra manage? Had you rewritten your parts?’ he asked the band in general.

  ‘We didn’t have to,’ Barnaby the theorbo player chimed in. ‘There was another bloke playing the crumhorn. Not bad, actually. Played a bum note in the introduction to Act Four, but then, we’re used to that.’ He pulled a face at Gerard again.

  ‘So …’ Marlowe turned back to Gerard. His scalp was prickling. He was so near Eleanor Merchant’s murderer, he could almost smell his sweat. Then, his eyes focussed beyond the man’s shoulder and saw something else to make his hair stand on end. Thynne, with Harrison at his back and two burly men behind him, were advancing on the stage. This could only mean that they had found Shakespeare and had come for him now. He would have to be quick. ‘So,’ he began again, ‘you had a friend stand in for you. Who was it?’

  Gerard licked his lips. ‘Um … not a friend.’ He looked in desperation around the rest of the musicians, but they avoided his eyes. ‘A man … a man met me as I was leaving the theatre the night before. We had had a late rehearsal. Well, that bit you wrote, Master Marlowe, that bit with the bloke and his wife …’

  ‘Tamburlaine and Zenocrate,’ Marlowe corrected him automatically.

  ‘Them, yes. Well, the music is really tricky in that bit and we needed to run through it, so we were here late. Weren’t we, boys?’

  There were reluctant grunts of agreement.

  ‘So?’ Marlowe said, with a look over his shoulder. Thynne had turned and was talking to Harrison. Now was his chance and he took it. He ducked down behind the theorbo, much to its player’s astonishment. ‘Just someone I don’t want to see,’ he explained. ‘Keep talking, everyone, but don’t look at me. Where was I? Yes, so, Gerard. Who was this man?’

  ‘I don’t know. He said he always wanted to play in a theatre orchestra, but he was a gentleman and couldn’t lower himself to do it for a living.’

  This time the grunt from the rest of the musicians was in harmony.

  ‘But he really wanted to play at the opening of the great Kit Marlowe’s second Tamburlaine. He offered me an angel.’ He shrugged. ‘I took it. It takes me nearly two weeks to earn that as a rule.’

  Miles had taken umbrage. ‘You didn’t stop to ask him if he could play, I suppose?’ he said.

  Gerard looked surprised. ‘I took that for granted. Why would he want to play with the orchestra if he couldn’t play? It makes no sense.’

  ‘And he could play,’ Marlowe said. ‘Couldn’t he? Apart from one bum note in the introduction to Act Four, that is to say.’

  ‘Yes. He was all right. Sat at the back … that was my idea,’ Barnaby said. ‘When I realized that we had a new boy on board, I wanted to keep him out of the way. In case we had to kick him out halfway through.’

  Marlowe smiled grimly. At the back was where the murderer would want to be and they gave it to him without demur. He must have thought God was on his side when that happened.

  ‘What did he look like?’

  Everyone looked at everyone else, sketching in a bland face, small eyes, perhaps. Big nose? No, average nose. Beard, though. Definitely a beard. Not trimmed, like Marlowe’s. Big. Odd kind of beard for town. They muttered on and came at last to the conclusion that he was just ordinary.

  ‘Did he speak?’

  Again, looks, mutters and the majority decision that no, not really. Gerard had heard him speak, but the street was noisy and he had whispered, so he didn’t really know how he sounded.

  ‘Old? Young?’

  Just average.

  Now Marlowe came to the difficult bit. Had the man, the average, ordinary man, made any odd noises, any strange movements throughout the play? He knew the answer before they gave it. No. Nothing, not really.

  ‘Except …’ The tambour player held up a finger and looked down at Marlowe, then quickly looked up in response to his frantic gesture.

  ‘Well,’ he said slowly, after the fashion of tambour player
s who always sounded as though they were listening to the beat of a different drummer, ‘who made the gun noise?’

  ‘Pardon?’ Marlowe felt the trickle of ice across his scalp again.

  ‘I make the gun noise, with my clapper. But I dropped it when old Miles breathed in his fly and I couldn’t reach it. It went down between the boards and I had to crawl to get it out. But there was a gun noise. It nearly deafened me.’

  Keeping his voice level, Marlowe asked, ‘Could it have been Master Shakespeare’s gun?’

  ‘Do you mind?’ said the tambour player. ‘I am a musician! I have perfect hearing. If I say it came from behind me, that’s where it came from.’

  ‘He’s not wrong,’ Barnaby agreed. ‘Not about being a musician, of course. But he’s great on direction, is Tobias. Can’t fault him on his directions.’ The other two nodded.

  Marlowe could hardly keep his voice level. ‘So, a complete stranger took the place of Gerard and there was the sound of a gun going off when there should be no gun. Meanwhile, someone in the audience was shot. And you didn’t think this was worth mentioning?’

  ‘Well, Shakespeare done it, didn’t he?’ Tobias asked, tapping himself gently on the head with his tambour again.

  Marlowe sighed and rubbed his face with his hands. Giving them something to do stopped him from using them to strangle the band. Eventually, he sighed and got up on to his knees. ‘Gather round, lads,’ he said. ‘I want to go backstage.’ And he crawled between their legs, not standing up until he was beyond the curtain.

  Christopher Marlowe had vanished like a will o’ the wisp sparkling over the Islington Ponds. One minute, Thynne had him in his sights, chatting to the orchestra; the next, he had gone. He glanced at his men – Dimwit and Didn’t Notice; no help there, then. He continued towards the stage but before he reached it, a man he’d met before came bounding across it and jumped down into the groundlings’ pit, landing neatly in front of him.

  ‘Where is he?’ Thynne asked him. ‘Where did he go?’

  ‘Who, sir?’ Jack Windlass could be as obtuse as any of Thynne’s Constables when he had a mind. And, unlike them, he had a mind.

  ‘Don’t waste my time, lackey. I want Marlowe.’

  ‘Ah,’ Windlass was smiling but his hand was firmly on the chest of the High Constable. ‘Autographs. Of course. Perhaps if you came back this afternoon, for the show. I’m sure Master Marlowe will be only too happy …’

  Thynne pressed closer. He was half a head taller than Windlass. ‘You do know who I am, sirrah?’ he grated.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ Windlass nodded. ‘But I don’t think you know who I am.’

  Thynne let out an explosive laugh. ‘You’re Marlowe’s dogsbody,’ he said. ‘I scrape things like you off my pattens every day of the week.’

  ‘Oh, I doubt that,’ Windlass said and held up a badge. It was gold and worked with the Queen’s arms.

  ‘Where did you get that?’ Thynne wanted to know. ‘Mine –’ he hauled a similar device out of his robe – ‘was given to me. You stole yours.’

  ‘Given to you?’ Windlass said. ‘By whom?’

  This was getting irritating, but Thynne decided to humour the idiot a while longer. ‘The Lord Mayor of London,’ he said.

  ‘Ah.’ Windlass nodded solemnly. ‘That’s good. But a knave doesn’t beat an ace, does it?’ He spun the badge to reveal a different crest altogether, the quartered arms of Lord Burghley.

  He stepped closer to the High Constable and whispered in his ear. ‘You see, sirrah, I am Master Marlowe’s man for today, but I will be the Principal Secretary’s man for ever. And it is his wish – no, let me rephrase that; it is his order – that Master Marlowe is to be left alone.’

  ‘But he’s guilty of murder,’ Thynne protested.

  ‘So’s the Pope,’ Windlass shrugged. ‘Why don’t you go and arrest him?’

  For a split second, Thynne’s temper threatened to get the better of him. But he checked himself. Windlass presented no problem, but Burghley? The High Constable might as well fill his Venetians with stones and walk into the Thames. He jabbed a finger towards Windlass’ face. ‘This isn’t over,’ he said. And he turned on his heel, his confused constabulary at his back.

  ‘Kit.’ Philip Henslowe hovered at the playwright’s elbow. ‘A word?’

  Marlowe had made his way up to the Heavens, the star-studded awning stretching above him. He had just witnessed a bizarre scene. Down below, on the ground, High Constable Thynne had just left. High Constable Thynne, who had been making a beeline for him only moments ago. And he’d been talking, of all people, to Windlass, whom Marlowe hadn’t realized was in the theatre at all. What was going on?

  ‘Kit?’

  ‘Sorry, Philip.’ Marlowe turned to him. ‘I was miles away. What’s the problem?’

  Henslowe’s eyes widened at the same time as his arms spread wide. ‘You mean apart from the fact that my leading man is currently lying in your bed with a lump on his head the size of a capon’s egg and muttering nonsense?’

  ‘What? I was away last night. What happened?’

  ‘The detail doesn’t matter,’ Henslowe said. ‘Even though I fear the Devil was in it. Your man Windlass put me in the picture, so to speak. Did I see Thynne here a few minutes ago?’

  Marlowe looked down again. ‘You did.’

  ‘He’s looking for you.’

  ‘Yes, I know. He’s not a stupid man. He could have realized it was I who sprung Shakespeare, not Robert Greene.’

  ‘No, Kit. You’ve got it all wrong. He doesn’t want you for that. He wants you for murder.’

  ‘What?’ Marlowe spun to face the man. While he’d been chewing the fat with Nicholas Faunt at Barn Elms, all Hell seemed to have been let loose.

  ‘Your dagger, Kit,’ Henslowe whispered, making doubly sure they were alone on that balcony. ‘Where is it?’

  ‘I lost it.’ The playwright frowned. That was the second time he’d been asked that question.

  ‘Yes.’ Henslowe nodded. ‘You lost it in the chest of God’s Word Garrett.’

  ‘What?’ Marlowe slapped his forehead. ‘Skeres,’ he said. ‘Or Frizer. Or both. They’re good – I’ll give them that.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘The last time I still had my dagger was here, in the theatre. Two gentlemen of the road came to congratulate me. I’d met them before – in Paul’s Walk – and I didn’t fall for them then.’

  ‘The Ratsey Lay?’ Henslowe had been there himself.

  ‘I sensed we’d have gone on to that,’ Marlowe smiled. ‘No, it was Find the Lady. I pulled out before I lost any money.’

  ‘And now?’

  ‘Now, I’ve lost my dagger.’

  Henslowe’s mind was whirring. ‘So … what are you saying, that these two coney-catchers killed Garrett?’

  ‘I don’t know, Philip.’ Marlowe said. ‘But I’m going to find out.’

  ‘What will you do?’ Henslowe called as Marlowe made for the stairs.

  ‘Do you mean apart from finding those two and squeezing them until their pips squeak? And, obviously, I shall give them over to the authorities and trust that my God will help me.’

  Philip Henslowe rested his elbows on the balcony rail and looked at all his people bustling about below. He watched the playwright stride across the stage and drop into the groundlings’ yard, calling for Windlass as he did so. ‘Your God, Kit Marlowe?’ he murmured to himself. ‘And who might that be? And since when did you do anything that involved trusting the authorities?’ Philip Henslowe didn’t like his players to know that he talked to himself. To be fair, he didn’t do it often and to be fairer still, he hadn’t realized that Richard Burbage was there, hovering like the plaque in the shadows of the Heavens.

  ‘I couldn’t help overhearing …’ the third maid said.

  ‘What?’ Henslowe grabbed the man’s lapels. ‘What did you overhear?’

  Burbage was a little flustered. He hadn’t really seen Henslowe on the ed
ge before and the sight was a little unnerving, the impresario’s eyes bulging and swivelling in all directions. ‘Er … about Alleyn, being incommoded.’

  Henslowe relented, not realizing that if Burbage had overheard that bit, he had overheard the rest too. ‘What of it?’ he snapped.

  ‘Well,’ Burbage’s eyes shone like a man who had just glimpsed Paradise. ‘I know the part.’

  ‘What part?’ Henslowe wasn’t following this conversation.

  ‘Tamburlaine,’ Burbage explained and broke straight into it. ‘“Now, bright Zenocrate, the world’s fair eye, Whose beams illuminate the lamps of heaven, Whose cheerful …”’

  But Henslowe had gone, clattering down the stairs to the stage.

  ‘I know it,’ Burbage shouted, running after him. ‘Word for word.’

  ‘Yes,’ Henslowe said. ‘Probably better than Alleyn does, if truth be told. But, well, I mean, third handmaiden to leading man – it’s a bit … meteoric, isn’t it?’

  ‘Some,’ said Burbage solemnly, as though he’d just offered to be shot in Henslowe’s place, ‘have greatness thrust upon them.’

  Henslowe dithered. And Burbage knew already that when Henslowe dithered, you’d got him. ‘Oh, very well,’ the impresario said, ‘but only until Alleyn’s better. And only because I’m desperate.’

  The groundlings were making their way past the Bear Garden later that day and Henslowe had a near mutiny on his hands. Almost everybody was higher in the stand-in pecking order than Burbage and by half past one of the clock only Thomas Sledd was still talking to Henslowe.

  ‘There could be trouble,’ the stage manager said from his grave old vantage point of twenty years, ‘when the riff-raff realize Ned’s not on today. Could be serious trouble.’

  ‘Yes, thank you, Master Sledd!’ Henslowe hissed. He knew, of course, that the man was right, but he didn’t need Sledd’s flashes of the obvious this afternoon. He looked through the slats at the crowd coming in and he glanced to his right. Richard Burbage was warming up, already in Tamburlaine’s magnificent armour, flexing his knees and making strange humming noises at the back of his throat.