Queen's Progress Read online

  Marlowe would have given his right arm to make sure the old creature didn’t cough at the table, so nodded his acquiescence. ‘Perhaps the fish disagrees …’ but he got no further.

  ‘Disagrees?’ the old man spat. ‘Disagrees? I have the constitution of an ox, an ox, I tell you. They’re trying to kill me, that’s what it is. Starve me out. My boy,’ and his eyes filled with tears, ‘my boy, their father, he’s spinning in his grave if he can see how they treat me.’

  The maids and lads were doing the rounds again and clearing away the platters. An enormous fish of dubious ancestry was brought round next, covered in powdered ginger in a layer so thick it filled the air with pungent dust as the food was ladled anyhow in front of the guests. When the clatter of spoons had stopped and the fish lay balefully on everyone’s plate, as if daring them to try it, the old man spoke again, taking up where he had left off.

  ‘My boy, my Edmund, he died and left me with …’ his eyes swivelled in their sockets towards where his grandchildren were sitting, off to Marlowe’s right. ‘The boys’re not so bad, I suppose. Weak. Snivelling. Sneaky. But not so bad. But Blanche …’ His head sank into his ruff until his chin disappeared, his petulant lower lip resting on the grubby linen. ‘Blanche … she’s the spawn of Beelzebub, laddie, mark my words.’

  Marlowe was adept at table talk. He had shared a board with everyone from scholars in their cups to almost the highest in the land and had rarely found himself as out of his depth as he was right now. True, he hadn’t taken to Mistress Blanche Middleham, but spawn of Beelzebub? That seemed a bit strong. He opened his mouth to try and steer the conversation into less choppy waters.

  ‘But that’s enough about my family,’ the old man suddenly said. ‘Where’s my bit of fish? Make sure there’s no ginger on it, mind.’ He extended a crabbed and filthy finger and rummaged on Marlowe’s plate. ‘There’s a good bit, look. Tender and plump. I can suck on that.’ He manoeuvred it to the edge of the platter and scooped it up with his spoon. At the third attempt, he got some of it into his mouth, distributing the rest up Marlowe’s sleeve, where bits of it got caught in the embroidery.

  Blanche laid a firm hand on the poet’s other arm. ‘Is Grandfather being a nuisance?’ she asked, modulating her voice for Company. ‘He can be a touch garrulous, sometimes. A dear, sweet old soul, of course, who we love to death, naturally. But … what has he been talking about, could you tell me?’

  ‘Oh, this and that.’ Marlowe smiled at her as he pushed the fish away. Somehow, he just didn’t feel hungry.

  The fingers resting on his arm grew tense, digging in between the tendons above the wrist. ‘No, really, Master Marlowe. What has he been talking about? It’s important that he doesn’t exert himself. His man will have to know, in case it stops him settling, you know. If he gets excited, he doesn’t sleep. And that means we’re all awake.’

  ‘Food,’ Marlowe smiled. ‘Family. The usual table talk.’

  She looked at him with a gimlet stare. ‘Food. Family. I see. Anything specific?’

  Marlowe began to feel as if he were between the Devil and the deep blue sea. On one side he had a mad old man in a frenzy of flying fish. On the other, Lucrezia Borgia, though nothing like as amusing and cultured. He prised her fingers from his wrist with difficulty. ‘Your grandfather has been telling me about Edmund,’ he said, paraphrasing and culling for the benefit of politeness.

  ‘Edmund?’ Her voice could have frozen over the lake in one instant. ‘And anything more?’

  ‘No. Just that. And how he enjoys a nice bit of fish …’

  ‘Fish?’ Her shrill voice almost punctured his eardrum and made faces down all the trestles swim upwards in alarm under their guttering candles. ‘Fish?’ She stood up and swooped around behind Marlowe’s chair and tilted her grandfather’s head back so the starched ruff crackled. With expert fingers, she scooped out the fish from his mouth, throwing the noisome results behind her to be lost in the rushes on the floor. ‘Grandfather!’ she screamed into his upturned face. ‘You know you can’t eat fish. Bones.’

  The old man stared at her, struggling free from her grasp and staggering to his feet. In an instant, he had snatched up his goblet and held it aloft in a shaking hand. ‘A toast!’ he shouted in his strongest voice, ‘to our friends in the North.’

  ‘Our friends …’ a few of those tenants nearest to him raised their cups and echoed the old man’s sentiment, though they had no idea what he was talking about and their voices trailed away.

  Furious, Blanche clicked her fingers, and this time two burly men unpeeled themselves from the shadows and took her grandfather, one under each arm and half marched, half carried him from the room. The old man looked a little bemused, but not outraged. This – or something like it – had clearly happened before.

  The room was silent for a moment until a lute player, tucked away in a corner, struck a rather desperate chord and the chatter began again.

  Blanche sat once more on Marlowe’s right and looked down at his plate, smeared with fish and ginger and looking far from appetising. ‘Sorry about that,’ she smiled. ‘He gets confused, poor dear. But you’re not eating, Master Marlowe,’ she added, gaily. ‘Dig in. Dig in. You’ll need all your strength for planning my masque.’

  Marlowe was no actor, he would be the first to agree, but somehow he managed to give a good performance of a man enjoying a bit of unrecognizable fish covered in powder until her attention mercifully went elsewhere.

  He looked around him as the fish congealed further. He looked into the rafters, hanging with cobwebs like linen. The plaster was softly flaking from the walls and gently added to the dust covering the fish. The windows were grimy and let little light in. In short, Farnham Hall had seen better days. It wasn’t that it was old and venerable, it was just middle-aged and tired. It hadn’t had love from its owners in many a long year and it wore its sadness like a shroud. Marlowe raised his glass an inch and silently toasted the ghosts of the place, who crowded above his head, silently weeping.

  Tom Sledd was helping Marlowe out of his boots later in his room and regaling him with the details of his meal. Marlowe had one foot on the man’s behind and it was hard not to give him a kick and send him flying.

  ‘I’ll have to see if the cook will give me the recipe for the chicken,’ he said, hauling on the buskin. ‘I tried to work out the spices. I have never tasted anything quite like it. Spicy, but very creamy, somehow. It was …’ he licked his lips as he gave a final tug and the boot came loose.

  ‘Tom.’ Marlowe hadn’t meant to sound so terse, but his empty stomach gave him little option. ‘Must you?’

  The stage manager turned round, the soft calf’s leather draped over his arm. ‘Did you not enjoy the chicken?’ He sounded staggered that such could be the case. ‘It was delicious.’

  ‘I daresay it was,’ Marlowe agreed, proffering his other foot. ‘I didn’t have chicken. On the top table, we had …’ he paused as his gorge rose, ‘some very old hare and a fish. I really don’t want to talk about it.’

  Sledd shrugged and grabbed his friend’s ankle. ‘That’s a shame. It was—’

  ‘Delicious. I know. And what about your company? Amusing, was it? Good conversation? Jolly japes?’

  Sledd smiled to himself. It wasn’t usual for him to have come off best by such a wide margin. ‘Very enjoyable, yes, since you ask. Everyone is looking forward to the masque. And of course, you know how the ladies flock to anyone who knows Ned Alleyn. His fame goes before him, that’s for sure.’

  ‘Even here? Don’t tell him, for the sake of our peace. He will never let us forget it.’

  ‘They hadn’t heard of Shaxsper, though.’

  ‘Well, that’s a mercy.’ Marlowe pushed with his stockinged foot on Sledd’s rear and the boot slid off. ‘I’m glad you had a good time, Tom. I’m sorry to be a curmudgeon. Hunger will do that to a man. And perhaps it wasn’t helped by the company.’

  Tom Sledd shrugged. ‘Mistress Blanche seems comely e
nough.’ He winked at Marlowe.

  ‘Comely is as comely does, Tom. Her treatment of her grandfather was not something she should show as her public face. She shouldn’t do it in private, but she made him look old and foolish in front of his tenants and his servants. It was cruel.’

  ‘Well …’ Tom Sledd suffered under the yoke of a tyrannical mother-in-law whose mind was not all it once had been, so he could see both sides. ‘Perhaps he tries her beyond what she can bear.’

  ‘She doesn’t have to bear it, does she?’ Marlowe was unlacing his doublet and venetians. His bed was not much softer than Tom Sledd’s and the hangings, if richer, were no cleaner but, even so, it looked tempting. Perhaps sleep would soothe his angry, empty stomach. ‘He has a man for that. And she has servants galore.’

  ‘Not that galore,’ Sledd said, as the arbiter of the gossip. ‘Most of the serving wenches and all but one of the lads had been brought in for the meal from the farms and cottages. Usually Mistress Blanche has a very small household. She’s trying to train them up before the Queen arrives.’

  ‘She has a mountain to climb if tonight was anything to go by. Did you notice any nymph material amongst them?’

  ‘There were a few well-turned calves,’ the stage manager said, nodding. He could never quite stop looking for more walking gentlemen, a habit which had sometimes brought him to the brink of a broken nose, if not worse. He suddenly yawned and stretched. ‘I’m for bed, I think. A heavy meal …’ He lowered his arms and looked contrite. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Ego te absolvo,’ Marlowe said, in a parody of Rome extending two fingers. ‘Now get out; you are beginning to look rather delicious and I don’t want to deliver you back to Meg with a bite taken out of your thigh.’ He threw a stocking at him for good measure. ‘I’ll see you by the lake in the morning, to work out where we can start and how much of Mistress Blanche’s vision we can deliver.’

  ‘Oh!’ Tom Sledd’s face lit up. ‘Do you mean we can choose what to do?’

  ‘Within reason,’ Marlowe acknowledged. ‘The Queen does like a bit of pomp, as we all know.’

  ‘I can do pomp,’ Sledd said. ‘But can I do pomp without fountains and nymphs, that’s my question.’

  Marlowe smiled and shooed him out of the room. ‘We’ll see, Tom, we’ll see. For now, my empty stomach and I would like to get some rest.’

  ‘Good night, then.’ Tom Sledd was not looking forward to his walk through bat-haunted corridors and stairways to his room and was putting off the evil hour.

  ‘Good night, sweet Thomas; may flights of angels sing you to your rest.’

  They looked at each other – sometimes, a good line just popped out from nowhere.

  ‘Jot that down, Thomas, will you? I can use that somewhere, I’m sure. Now, good night!’ And with that, Marlowe blew out the candle and pulled the damp and slightly musty bedding up to his chin and closed his eyes resolutely against the dark.

  Hours passed, punctuated by the whispering of mice under the bed and worse in the dark corners of the ceiling. The curtains at the window didn’t quite meet in the middle and a ghostly line showed their inadequacy where a sliver of moonlight poked its fingers across the floor. As soon as Tom Sledd had left, closing the door behind him with exaggerated care, Marlowe had sprung wide awake. He closed his eyes and told himself to sleep. He counted sheep and then, when that didn’t work, a host of other animals, becoming more and more exotic as the night wore wearily on. When he had reduced himself to counting tortoises, which looked increasingly like Sir Walter Middleham but a little faster on their feet, he admitted defeat and swung his legs over the side of the bed and groped on the nightstand for his stump of candle. Blanche Middleham’s frugal housekeeping meant that beeswax candles were kept for high days and holy days – here in the bedrooms, tallow was the order of the day and, soon after the click of the flint, the room was heavy with the smell of roasting meat. Marlowe usually disliked the smell of tallow candles but never more so than now – it brought to mind huge, glistening sides of beef, running with juices, accompanied by hunks of bread, still warm from the baker’s paddle, with an ebony crust speckled with sea salt and caraway. There was nothing to be done now – even if he blew it out at once, the smell would last until dawn. He padded across the floor, trying to ignore the skittering of tiny feet dashing out of the way as he made his way to the window. Perhaps some fresh air would help.

  He flung the curtains wide and opened the window with a creak of hinges fit to wake the dead. The night air was still, cool and welcoming after the fug of the hall and the dusty confines of the bedchamber. He leaned out, listening to the silence that wasn’t silence, the click and hum of the countryside going about its business in the dark. He could hear, over a far distant horizon, the lowing of a cow mourning for its calf, the cry of an owl and the squeal of its prey, its life cut short in a flurry of feather and talon. He could hear the rustle of birds in the ivy which cloaked the wall beside his head, the faint cheep of a sleepy sparrow making him smile in spite of himself. From the hulking shadow of the keep which hung like a thunderhead over Farnham Hall, he heard the chitter of bats and the ring of a footfall. Briefly, a flash of candlelight shone in a bright rectangle across the mossy stones of the quadrangle two storeys below. An urgent whisper from inside the room brought whoever was abroad scurrying across the flags and the door was shut, leaving a bright patch to float before Marlowe’s tired eyes. No doubt a maidservant sneaking in a lover; it wasn’t the first time and no doubt it would not be the last that the Hall had been the unwitting host to such a thing. Suddenly, sleep came to Marlowe, sweeping down from the moonlit sky like a living thing and perching on his shoulder, muttering sweet lullabies in his ear. Leaving the window open, he turned back to his bed and, leaning over to blow out his candle, slept.

  THREE

  ‘Master Marlowe! Master Marlowe! Wake up!’

  In his dream, Marlowe was being shaken by the shoulder and some huge, golden creature was shouting in his ear. He put up a hand to fend it off and it sank, as it seemed, wrist deep in some warm and cloying morass. He shook his head and muttered, trying to make the dream go away, but it would not leave him alone.

  ‘Master Marlowe! Wake up, I say.’

  This time, he opened his eyes and squinted up at the creature. It had a halo of light around its head, which was enormous and ringed with snakes, all writhing around its face, snapping at him and shouting.

  ‘Wha …? Who are you? What’s going on?’

  ‘Master Marlowe, for the love of God, wake up! Wake up!’

  The creature resolved itself into Blanche Middleham, leaning over him and dripping her candle onto his pillow. His hand seemed to be embedded between her breasts, breaking from the confines of her nightgown. He hastily withdrew it and struggled upright. He shook his head and was awake.

  ‘Mistress Blanche,’ he said, clearing his throat. ‘What is it? What time is it?’

  ‘Dawn, dawn or thereabouts,’ she said, testily. ‘It’s Grandfather.’

  ‘What is? Is he choking? Disappeared?’ There seemed to be so many things that could be wrong with the old man, from what he had seen so far.

  ‘No.’ She stood upright and turned modestly aside so that Marlowe could clamber out of the clutches of her fourth-best feather bed and assume some nether clothing. ‘No. I’m afraid it’s worse than that, Master Marlowe. I’m afraid he’s dead.’

  Halfway into his venetians, Marlowe was brought up short. ‘Dead? What happened? Was he taken ill?’

  ‘No,’ she said, short and to the point. ‘He has just been found out in the grounds. Dead, broken, at the foot of the battlements. Excuse me if I sound cold, Master Marlowe. I am of course distraught, that the dear old soul …’ she made a sound which was suspiciously like the one Richard Burbage made, usually in about Act Two, Scene Four, to show how distressed he was about something ‘… that the dear old soul should meet his Maker alone and in such a place.’

  There was a mutual silence, caused by surpri
se on Marlowe’s part at least. Then she turned back to him, oblivious to the fact he was still only half dressed.

  ‘Hurry, Master Marlowe, if you please. We must go to poor Grandfather.’

  Marlowe paused in tucking in his shirt. ‘Why me?’ he asked. It was true that he was a good choice in such a circumstance, but how did she know that?

  ‘I need a man by my side, sir, and James is certainly not the one I would choose. He will only go to pieces and, really, I am only holding myself together by the merest thread as it is. The others are servants and it does not do to show emotion in front of them.’

  Marlowe looked at her face in the candlelight. Not a thread so much as a hawser thick enough to hold back the Pelican at the very least, but he always tried to give a lady the benefit of the doubt whenever he could, so he grabbed for his cloak and wrapped it around him against the chill of dawn. Slipping his feet into his shoes, waiting at the side of the bed for the day which was not yet here, he extended an arm towards his bedroom door.

  ‘After you, Mistress Blanche,’ he said. ‘Shall we go and bring your grandfather home, with all due respect as he deserves?’

  ‘Thank you.’ She bowed and went out into the corridor beyond, lit with a faint silvery light from the pre-dawn sky. ‘Grandfather liked you. He would be glad for you to help him now.’

  ‘I am here to be of service,’ Marlowe muttered.

  ‘Poor dear Grandfather. He was so looking forward to seeing Her Majesty beneath his roof.’

  Privately, Marlowe thought that it was now unlikely that the Queen would ever cross this threshold now, but said nothing. If the woman was really upset and just hid it very well, it would serve nothing to make things worse at this point. And he was a gentleman, when all was said and done.

  The old man lay on the grass cropped short by the Middleham sheep. He was wearing his nightshirt, and his nightcap lay some feet away, caught on a thorn bush by the wind of his fall. The great, silent keep loomed above him, brooding guiltily, as if it had crushed the old man with its presence, blocking out the sun and killing the light.