Witch Hammer Read online

Thomas looked ahead at the first wagon where Ned Sledd sat on the board with Marlowe, declaiming as he went. He looked behind at the third wagon, groaning with flats and drapes and fluttering costumes. ‘I thought we were going to Oxford.’

  ‘His Lordship’s got other ideas.’

  Thomas saw His Lordship in the far distance, his dappled grey caracoling as he criss-crossed the road. ‘Ah.’ The lad who played the ladies held up a hand from the reins. ‘I know what they call that. It’s called “Noblesse Oblige”. Only bit of French I know.’

  ‘Good for you,’ Nat muttered.

  They drove in silence for a while.

  ‘So where are we going, then – exactly, I mean?’ Thomas asked.

  ‘Some country house or other. Place called Clopton, on the edge of Stratford. Some old mate of His Lordship. He owes him a favour, apparently. God, I hate private house shows.’

  ‘Oh, I dunno,’ Thomas said brightly. ‘You get a bed of sorts. A roof over your head. Decent food, probably. And who knows?’ He nudged Sawyer in the ribs. ‘Bit of slap and tickle with the serving wenches, eh?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ the comic grunted. ‘Wonderful. And then it’s: “Tell me something funny, Nat.” “Say something funny.” “Do that funny falling over thing, Nat.” Why do they always want me to be funny? There’s nothing funny about being a comedian, take it from me.’

  Marlowe saw it first, riding on the first wagon with Sledd. All afternoon, Lord Strange had led the rattling, groaning wagons, starting his horse in this direction, then that. But now, far in the distance, His Lordship had stopped. He sat motionless in the saddle for a while at a point where the road crossed the marshes and the tall reeds stood still and silent to his left. Sledd had stopped declaiming now and was concentrating on driving the horses, clucking and clicking softly to them every now and again as they plodded on.

  Suddenly, Strange’s grey shied and whinnied, swerving to the right and throwing her rider. His Lordship hit the dusty ground with a thud and he lay there, ominously still.

  ‘God’s teeth!’ Sledd’s head came up at the commotion. ‘Kit, your legs are younger than mine. Run and see if he’s all right.’

  Marlowe was already out of his seat and running for the reeds. It was no distance but it seemed miles to where Strange lay, his body shimmering in the heat rising from the road. The horse had wandered away, shaking its head as though tormented by an unseen spur and lashing out with its hind hoofs. Marlowe reached Strange and lifted his head. The man was deathly pale, but he was conscious and blinking in the sun.

  ‘My Lord.’ Marlowe held his face firmly in one hand and supported his neck with the other. ‘Are you hurt?’

  Strange winced. ‘No,’ he said, easing the dagger from the small of his back, ‘dented pride is all.’ He let Marlowe help him up. Then he caught the playwright’s sleeve. ‘Did you see her, Kit?’ he asked. He had a wild look in his eyes, swivelling his head from side to side.

  ‘Who, My Lord?’ Marlowe asked, seeing nothing but the silent reeds and the road.

  ‘She was there . . .’ He pointed to his right. ‘In the rushes. A faerie’s child. Tall, gaunt. She . . .’

  ‘My Lord?’ Marlowe frowned at the man, who was clearly terrified.

  ‘She had no eyes, Kit. She had no eyes.’

  FOUR

  Edward Alleyn knew the Smock Alleys like the back of his hand. And he knew a hundred ways to reach them without bothering the Gentlemen of the Watch. The problem was that the Smock Alleys after dark were no place for a respectable player like him to be seen; unless it was dead – which was always a possibility in the Smock Alleys. So instead he decided to risk the Aldgate before making his way west.

  ‘Who goes?’ he heard the guttural bark and the rattle of pikes as lanterns swung to and fro in the gathering gloom, sending their beams bouncing off cobbles and buttresses. To his left loomed the ancient stones of the Ald Gate, half ruined now where generations of Londoners had helped themselves to refurbish their own homes in these fast-building times. If only stones could talk most of the houses for a mile around would say ‘take me back to Ald Gate.’

  ‘Edward Alleyn,’ he answered, ‘Keeper of the King’s Bears.’ True, he had won the title in a dice game, but the Gentlemen of the Watch didn’t know that and it sounded grand enough.

  ‘Advance, Master Alleyn,’ the gruff voice came again.

  Alleyn marched into the lantern light and looked at the grizzled face lit eerily by the lantern held low. The helmet rim reflected it back down again, giving the man’s face planes and hollows which in the daylight were merely the curves of a normal face. A second lantern was shoved into the actor’s nose and, although he loved to be the centre of attention as a rule, he pulled back, blinking, turning his head to avoid the singeing flame. He had to consider his looks, above all else and a singed actor was not likely to be as successful with the ladies.

  ‘What’s your passport?’ the grizzled guard wanted to know.

  Alleyn flipped the man a groat and the guard caught it with a flourish born of years on the take. He bit the coin and pocketed it in one fluid movement. ‘Yes,’ he said, for the ears of anyone passing by. ‘These papers seem in order. Pass, Master Alleyn. Welcome to London.’

  Alleyn grunted in acknowledgement. All in all, the journey had not gone well. He’d been harangued by a religious maniac on the road, warning him not to go south because the Pestilence was in the English Jerusalem and it was God’s judgement on the place, damned to eternity as it was. He himself had seen the Dance of Death on the wall of Paul’s churchyard and he knew the end was near. To cap it all, Alleyn’s horse had pulled up lame as he trotted through Highgate and from there he’d endured the Hell the Puritan spoke of on the jolting back of a farmer’s cart. He was thirsty, he was hungry, he was tired. But he had in his knapsack a play that he knew would earn him a pretty penny from Philip Henslowe or even that malevolent bastard Burbage if the mood took him. He might even nip it round to the Earl of Worcester, whose purse, men said, was the heaviest in the kingdom. It might not make him enough to retire for good but at least he could get out of Strange’s company and, for a man staring nineteen in the face, that seemed a good option.

  He was just sauntering down Shoreditch with the old city wall to his left when he became uncomfortably aware that he was not alone. There was the distinct thud of somebody else’s boots behind him and, when he stopped, they stopped, too, just one pace later. His ears became so attuned to the abiding echo of the following footsteps that they seemed to ring in his head the more he listened for them. Like all good strolling players and Keepers of the King’s Bears, Alleyn carried a dagger in the small of his back. It was literally and metaphorically a two-edged weapon. On the one hand, its silver-damascened hilt would attract any footpad north or south of the river; on the other, it could kill him.

  He quickened his pace. Around the corner, he knew, where the stalls of the squatters lay scattered under the dark jut of the wall, were alleyways of utter blackness where he could lose anybody – Money Bag Alley and Harebrain Court. Once there, he defied any cutpurse to find him. But he wasn’t ready for the pincers, two footpads working as one and even as his right hand snaked back for his dagger hilt, he felt the tip of a sword jab into the collar of his doublet and force his head upright. In a second, his knife was gone from its sheath and he stood alone between two points of steel glinting wickedly in the firelight.

  He glanced to right and left, his chin still in the air, the sword blade tickling his tonsils. In the soft glow of the fires he saw a little girl looking at him, then her squatter mother, all rags and dirt, swept her away. Gulls fell to footpads every day in Shoreditch. No one saw it. No one heard a thing. The man behind him, who had his dagger, reached forward and thrust a hand into his wallet. The other prodded with the blade to make sure he stood still. He heard the hiss of parchment as Dido, Queen of Carthage left his person and with it, a happy and contented future.

  ‘Hm-mm,’ he heard the footpad mutter in the
half light. He sounded satisfied. What were the odds that the thieving bastard could read? Suddenly, the sword point dropped from his throat and Alleyn found himself bundled around a bastion into a black corner. He heard one sword being sheathed but not the other and knew the nearby footpad was still carrying his knife. The shadow was not just as black as night, it was suddenly silent as well, except for the sibilant whisper of one of the cutpurses to the other. Then, a grunt of assent and a low laugh.

  ‘Welcome to London, Master Marlowe,’ a voice said, in his ear.

  ‘Who . . .?’ Alleyn said, startled and confused.

  Both footpads chuckled then. It was no good these amateurs trying to sneak in to the city under false names if they dressed like peacocks and carried papers with their real identities written in their back packs. Would they never learn?

  Alleyn risked turning his head and saw, in the dim light filtering round from the squatters’ fires, the embroidered ‘E’ on their shoulders and the leather jacks and tall boots.

  ‘We know a gentleman who’s been looking for you,’ one of them said and Edward Alleyn, player and Keeper of the King’s Bears was bundled into the night.

  Alleyn had never been to the Clink before. It was one of those Hell-holes into which the Privy Council and the Lord Mayor threw their human rubbish. Even before dawn had crept into his cell, he knew he was in the filthiest prison in London. His eyes had become accustomed, in the predawn light, to the walls around him, slick with green slime and cold to the touch. Outside in the air it was high summer and the sun would be beating down on the tenter grounds and the bear pits, the markets and merchants’ houses. The footless martlets would be swooping around the eaves of the houses, growing fat on the flies that swarmed from the filth, human and animal, that filled the gutters.

  In the Clink it was chill and dead like a vast ice-house on some great lord’s estate. He was manacled to the wall, the clammy iron chafing his wrist. He was aware of dried blood under his chin where the Queen’s guard had pricked him the night before and his voice was still hoarse from yelling at them that his name was not Christopher Marlowe. With luck, he wasn’t scarred and his voice would recover its honeyed tones in time. He would need careful nursing from a plump and pliant wife; someone else’s wife, that is. They were better nurses than one’s own, or so he had always believed.

  Alleyn had already realized that time stood still here. Every now and again he heard a cry beyond his cell, a scream or a curse, it was hard to tell. He’d heard about the Clink, of course, that there were large courts where hags who once passed as women were to be had for the taking and a grilled window, where, for a suitable fee to the turnkey, you could buy your beer, your wine, your coney, your chicken. Lawyers of course cost more, but no one in the Clink could afford a lawyer and they never came near the place.

  He couldn’t tell, then, how much time had passed before he heard the rattle of locks and the squeal as his cell door opened on protesting hinges. The turnkey thudded in first, a man with shoulders like linen presses who had banged Alleyn’s bracelet into place an eternity before. But it was the man behind him who grabbed the player’s attention. He was tall and elegant with a plumed cap and a Colleyweston cloak. Alleyn noticed he carried no sword but wore a baldric, so perhaps he had left his weapon at the door. The man looked down at him.

  ‘Stand up!’ The turnkey kicked Alleyn viciously in his outstretched leg.

  ‘It’s all right,’ the dandy said. ‘I can squat. Leave us, Master Gaoler.’

  The turnkey hesitated. He’d guided gentlemen through the Clink before, pointing out the immense attractions of the place and the dubious celebrities who lived there. Some of them would pay good money to jab a stick into the vitals of Mad Will Udall just to see him react. Others were more interested in just what was under the skirts of Mistress Earthworm, who had breasts but the pocky of a boy. One or two Puritans came to bring bread and hot soup, but most of them were repelled by the oaths and curses and left in a hurry. But no one, ever, asked to be left alone in a place like this.

  ‘Now, Master Gaoler.’ The tone was insistent and the dandy looked as though he could take care of himself, so the turnkey shrugged and left.

  The dandy squatted in front of Alleyn. ‘I am Nicholas Faunt,’ he said. ‘Who are you?’

  ‘Who I am not,’ Alleyn told him, ‘is Christopher Marlowe, whoever he is.’

  ‘I know you’re not,’ Faunt said.

  ‘You do?’ This was the first sound of sanity Alleyn had heard in several hours. Or was it days?

  ‘Of course. A case of mistaken identity, I’m afraid. The lads who brought you here are a little long on overzealousness and a little short on brains. But then –’ he produced a sheaf of paper from beneath his cloak – ‘you were carrying Kit Marlowe’s play.’

  ‘You know it?’ Alleyn blinked, preparing all sorts of subterfuges in his head.

  ‘I know his hand,’ Faunt said. ‘And, in case that sounds over-clever, his name is on the page at the beginning and end of every scene. Perhaps he had reason to mistrust people; I wonder why.’ He fixed Alleyn with a gimlet stare. ‘How did you come by it?’

  ‘I found it,’ Alleyn said.

  ‘Liar.’ Faunt smiled. ‘Try again.’

  ‘All right.’ Alleyn changed tack. ‘I bought it.’

  ‘Liar.’ Faunt was still smiling and although Alleyn didn’t know it, it was a good sign Faunt was still smiling. He should have been more grateful than he was.

  ‘Very well.’ The player decided to brazen it out. ‘I stole it.’

  ‘Ah.’ Faunt’s smile had vanished and Alleyn didn’t know what to make of that. ‘From Marlowe?’

  Alleyn nodded. ‘The same. Tell me, Master Faunt, is this play so important?’

  Faunt stood up. ‘Not in the slightest, any more than you are. Where is Marlowe?’

  Alleyn began to breathe easier. If the play was nothing, then there would be no charges for its theft. If Marlowe was Faunt’s target, he, Edward Alleyn, player and Master of the King’s Bears, was in the clear. ‘When I last saw him, he was in a travelling players’ camp. Somewhere outside Ware.’

  ‘Which troupe?’ Faunt asked.

  ‘Lord Strange’s Men,’ Alleyn said.

  ‘Where are they bound?’

  ‘Oxford, as far as I know. With the plague here . . .’

  ‘You shouldn’t believe everything you hear, Master Alleyn. If there is plague here, I am the Queen of Scots. It’s just a ruse to get you strolling charlatans out of town and give us all a rest.’

  ‘Who are you?’ Alleyn frowned up at the man. ‘Why this interest in Marlowe?’

  ‘That’s my business,’ Faunt said. ‘Turnkey!’ He straightened up and banged once on the door. ‘Ho!’

  The door screeched open again and the oaf stood there, blocking the space.

  ‘This is Master Edward Alleyn,’ Faunt told him. ‘He claims to be a travelling player which, as you know, Master Gaoler, is in itself a felony.’

  The man nodded and smirked as Alleyn scrabbled to his feet in indignation. The chain held him fast and all he could manage was a humiliating crouch.

  ‘He was also in possession of stolen goods.’

  ‘Holy Mother of God . . .’ Alleyn mumbled, but his usually stentorian voice trailed away. He didn’t want to add blasphemy to the charges against him.

  ‘For enacting lewd and libidinous entertainment in the street, Master Player, you’ll get six months, quite possibly right here. For impersonating a Cambridge scholar, another six.’ He paused, apparently deep in thought, keeping count on his gloved fingers. ‘For the theft of the play, we’re looking at two years, the lash and possibly, depending on the magistrate, the loss of your right hand.’

  Alleyn slumped to the ground, a broken man.

  ‘As for the unfortunate outburst a moment ago, taking the Holy Virgin’s name in vain . . . If the magistrate is of the Puritan persuasion, you’ll have an iron spike driven through your tongue. Good day to you, Master A
lleyn.’

  And he was gone, leaving the Keeper of the King’s Bears in a blackness of despair.

  In the dark passage outside, well away from the cell door, Faunt pressed a couple of coins into the turnkey’s hand. ‘I have seen Master Alleyn on the stage,’ he said, ‘and he turns in a good performance, when he remembers to act and not just display himself for the ladies. Keep the arrogant bastard on bread and water for three days,’ he said, ‘then give him his traps and let him go. And, Master Gaoler . . .’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Don’t tell him a God damned thing.’

  ‘Where are we, Nat?’ Thomas wasn’t a born navigator. When you spend all your time applying lead make-up and lacing yourself into farthingales, points of the compass aren’t the first things on your mind.

  ‘Warwickshire.’ Nat was munching on another apple. ‘Haunted Warwickshire. Piping Pebworth, Dancing Marston, Haunted Hillbrough, Hungry Grafton, Dodging Exhall, Papist Wixford, Beggarly Broom and Drunken Bideford.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ Tom asked.

  ‘Villages hereabouts. I knew ’em as a lad. My old dad was a forester in Arden – before he took his foot off with an axe. Trust me, this shire’s haunted.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’ Thomas looked at him. The horses snorted and tossed their heads.

  ‘They sense it,’ the comic grunted. ‘I was last here . . . what . . . nine years ago, when the Queen came to Kenilworth. Stood in Echo Fields.’

  ‘Echo Fields?’ Thomas repeated.

  ‘You’ve got it,’ Nat said and tossed his apple core away to the side of the road.

  Thomas looked confused and ran the conversation back in his head. Ah, that must be a joke. Not one of Nat’s best, but no one could be hilarious all the time. He gave a short laugh and said, ‘Where is Echo Fields?’

  ‘Outside the walls at Kenilworth,’ Nat told him, wrestling a piece of apple skin from between his teeth. ‘The Earl of Leicester, God rot him, flooded the land for his barges and his pretty fireworks, all to impress Her Majesty of course. I was in Sir Christopher Hatton’s household then.’