The Reckoning Read online

  ‘Isabella’s on the turn,’ he muttered to Marlowe. As if things weren’t bad enough already.

  ‘Why can’t we do one of your plays, Master Marlowe?’ the boy quavered. ‘We know the words to them.’

  ‘Yes, Kit,’ Alleyn added his voice to the throng. ‘Something we know.’ He smiled smugly. It didn’t matter which one it was, he knew he would have the leading role.

  ‘Or I could write something,’ Shaxsper’s Midland tones were soon smothered by catcalls and slow handclaps.

  Marlowe picked his way down to the groundlings’ pit, carefully stepping from tier to tier. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I do happen to have a new play we might consider. Easy to learn.’

  There were cries of ‘huzzah’ from the mob.

  ‘With a king in it.’

  Alleyn bowed solemnly.

  ‘And you can have the parts by this evening.’

  The stage was suddenly full of beaming faces. A small boy, almost hidden by an enormous farthingale and ruff, stepped forward.

  ‘Will we all have parts, Master Marlowe? Only, I gave up a job in the fish market for this.’

  ‘Of course, … umm …’

  Sledd had arrived at Marlowe’s shoulder. ‘Andrew.’

  ‘Andrew. I don’t know if you will all have lines …’

  Skeres and Frizer glanced at each other, looking mutinous. It had been some years since they had been merely silent Walking Gentlemen and it wasn’t their way to accept demotion.

  ‘But I am sure we can spread them around, if needs be. There may be a niece or two involved. Now, I suggest that you all go and take your costumes off, get them to the seamstresses and tell them I will let them have the requirements soon. Then take the rest of the day off and come back at sunset for your pages. And … Mr Finch?’

  The big man raised his head, a query on his face.

  ‘If I may have a word?’

  ‘Can I take this stuff off first, Master Marlowe?’

  ‘Of course.’ There was no noticeable difference between what he was wearing and what he had had on when Marlowe saw him last, but it was best he was comfortable when he got the bad news.

  Marlowe turned to Sledd. ‘He’s got to go. There are too many people in this damned project, and I use the word advisedly. He was the last of the gentlemen to get a part, it’s only fair he is the first to go. And I don’t have parts for everyone as it is.’

  ‘You can’t get rid of anyone, Kit,’ Sledd said, shaking his head.

  Marlowe raised an eyebrow. ‘Can’t I? Whyever not?’

  ‘Because Skeres and Frizer will raise Hell. They have a kind of … I don’t know what to call it, really, but they have made some kind of guild where everyone pays them a farthing a play and they look after them. It won’t catch on, but at the moment, I can’t get worried about it. Just leave Finch where he is. Or offer him something else. If you can give that lad a niece, surely Finch’s worth a nephew.’

  Marlowe sighed. He didn’t know what the theatre was coming to. He looked at Sledd. Was it a trick of the light, or was the man starting to grow a little grey at the temples? Ever since they had known each other, Sledd had taken on the worries of the world and was still looking for more. So if Finch had to be kept on, then so be it. But there was no way on this earth that it would be on a stage. He decided to talk about something else.

  ‘So … all is well?’ Lord Burghley sipped his wine. Outside, beyond the leaded windows of the palace of Whitehall, the sleet of December was driving from the west, pounding on the thick glass and trickling onto the lead.

  ‘As well as it can be, Father.’ Robert Cecil, the Queen’s spymaster was only now beginning to feel his feet again. Whitehall was a huge place, spreading like a small village from the parliament houses to the Strand and to cross it, a man had to brave the elements, even on a bleak winter’s afternoon. ‘Except that Marlowe is with the troupe.’

  Burghley raised an eyebrow. Both men knew Marlowe. He had done the Queen inestimable service since Francis Walsingham, Cecil’s predecessor, had recruited him from Cambridge. Even so, the man was tricky, mercurial; as fast with his dagger as he was with his brain. All fire and air, the Muses’ darling, but not a man to be trusted; not completely. All projectioners had that quality; it was what made them indispensable. An honest man was predictable, boring; you always knew which way he would run. But Marlowe? He was a different question. And with him, you knew one thing only – that he wouldn’t run at all.

  ‘Will that be a problem, Robert?’ the old man asked. Burghley had watched the Queen’s back now for more years than his son had been alive. And for most of those three decades, she had been the Jezebel of England, the target for any demented Papist west of Rome. Problems were what Lord Burghley did; his son had inherited them too.

  ‘I shouldn’t think so.’ Cecil poured himself a glass of Rhenish. ‘Our man would have been careful.’

  ‘But Marlowe will investigate?’ Burghley wanted to know.

  ‘When a man is found murdered under the same roof that covered him, albeit briefly? Count upon it.’

  ‘Is our man up to it?’ Burghley squinted at the spymaster. ‘Keeping one step ahead of Marlowe, I mean?’

  Cecil sat himself down by the fire, warming his feet. ‘We may have to send someone else, you know, to keep an eye.’

  ‘Who?’ Burghley asked.

  ‘I thought perhaps … Nicholas Faunt.’

  ‘Faunt?’ Burghley paused, in mid-sip. ‘I thought you’d dispensed with his services.’

  ‘There was a parting of the ways, yes,’ Cecil said, ‘but I believe that various members of the Privy Council use him from time to time – Howard, Hunsdon; Faunt has his uses.’

  ‘Won’t Marlowe be suspicious?’ Burghley asked. He knew his son to have a mind like a razor, for all he only reached most men’s shoulders, but he would always be the old man’s little boy and the father in him couldn’t quite let go.

  ‘Undoubtedly,’ Cecil nodded, crossing one leg over the other as the fire warmed his buskins, ‘but he both likes and trusts Faunt. We can give him a cover story that even Marlowe will accept.’

  There was a silence. ‘Shame about Foxe, though,’ Burghley said. ‘I liked him.’

  ‘Hmm.’ Cecil stared at the crackling flames. ‘The world, Father, is full of people we like. The trouble is, we can’t live with them, can we?’

  ‘I found the girl, by the way,’ Marlowe said.

  ‘Girl?’ Sledd still had vague worries about the all-naked Ralph Roister Doister.

  ‘The girl who was with Foxe when he died. It was Moll. You know the one.’ Marlowe sketched in with quick fingers the tiny girl with the face like a flower and hair like spun coal.

  Sledd looked dubious. He was a happily married man.

  Marlowe laughed and punched him on the arm. ‘I know you do, Tom, so don’t give me the happily married man look. She was paid to push him onto the bed.’

  Sledd was outraged. ‘So you took her to the Watch?’

  ‘Of course I didn’t!’ Marlowe sometimes wondered whether people knew him at all. ‘She isn’t a murderer. She was no more to blame than a musket ball is if it is fired into someone’s heart. She didn’t know the knife was there.’

  ‘Well, the man who paid her, then.’ Sledd wasn’t going to let this go, but at least he now had something else to be irate about.

  ‘I don’t know who that was,’ Marlowe conceded. ‘Moll said she could describe him, but only …’ He let the silence speak the rest of the sentence for him.

  ‘Only? Oh, I see.’ Marlowe thought that it was one of Sledd’s most pleasant features that he could still blush like a girl.

  ‘I suppose we could check every one in London, but it would be a difficult task and I’m not sure even Moll would be up to it. I’ll have to try other methods. Now, where’s Master Finch?’

  ‘I’m disappointed, Master Marlowe, I can’t deny.’ Amyntas Finch slumped in front of Marlowe but still managed to be a head taller than anyone else
. ‘I’ve been practising and everything.’

  ‘I could tell you had been,’ Marlowe said and that at least was true. No one could walk like that unless they had put in a lot of work on the art of Acting Natural. ‘But with this sudden change of play, poor Tom has so much on his plate that he needs a good, reliable man to help him redesign and paint the sets, move everything around, co-ordinate the move of everything to Scadbury. And it strikes me that you are the kind of man who is good with his hands.’ Marlowe inclined his head and Finch obligingly bent his to meet him. ‘Just between us, I don’t think Tom is feeling as young as he was. Tempus fugit, you know. He’s been in this game a long time now and needs an assistant who can help with the heavy lifting.’

  Finch stepped back and nodded. ‘I see what you mean, Master Marlowe,’ he rumbled. ‘I don’t mind what I do, I just want to be in the theatre. It’s what I always wanted, even from a little ’un.’

  Marlowe could hardly believe that Finch had ever been little, but he took his word for it. He was also rather relieved. Men who thought they had the theatre in their blood, no matter how misguided that belief might be, tended to be a little testy and quick with their fists. And a clout from this man would be no small matter. ‘Well, that’s excellent, then,’ Marlowe said, slapping a bicep like a tree trunk in a friendly fashion. ‘Tom will be in the room at the back, seeing what scenery will be suitable, what needs changing. If you go and find him, he’ll give you something to do.’

  ‘Will do, Master Marlowe,’ the big man said and ambled off, amiability coming off him in waves.

  ‘That went well,’ Shaxsper suddenly materialized at Marlowe’s elbow. ‘I hung around in case you needed help.’

  Marlowe looked at the man from Stratford and tried to think of any way in which he could have been useful. He was beginning to run to fat and his slightly protuberant eyes were beginning to look more than a little myopic. At best, he could have bored the man to death. ‘Thank you, Will,’ Marlowe said. ‘That was thoughtful. Can I help you with anything?’

  The would-be playwright blushed and looked down at his feet, one toe drawing an arc in the dust of the groundlings’ pit. ‘I just wondered … well, if your new thing still needs work …?’

  Marlowe looked at the man and wondered yet again at the man’s unshakeable confidence in his own tiny talent. ‘Thank you, Will. I wish I had thought of that, but the copyists have it already and it’s almost complete. When we are rehearsing though, who knows …’

  Shaxsper looked up happily. ‘I’ll read it through and mark up any places, shall I?’

  ‘What an excellent idea,’ Marlowe said. ‘Let me know.’

  Shaxsper slid off into the shadows and Marlowe slumped into a seat, pushing aside a half-crushed turnip as he did so. Sometimes, he wondered why he was in the theatre at all. He looked up and saw the grey winter sky above the pit, the clouds still heavy with sleet scudding overhead. He smelled the mud at his feet, pocked with half-rotted vegetables which had either never been thrown or had been hurled back by a walking gentleman who had had as much as he could take. He heard the sawing already coming from behind the stage as Tom Sledd gutted his scenery to make his new play come alive. A London street, the king’s palace, Tynemouth Castle, Paris and the open country – he’d need the lot. He also heard a brief shriek as Ned Alleyn took full advantage of being fitted for a new costume. He smiled up at the sky – he never wondered why for long.

  Despite what many people thought of him, Kit Marlowe didn’t actually like confrontation. If he had been able to choose his perfect day, it would be one spent doing a little writing between breakfast and a light dinner, then a walk somewhere pleasant, preferably alongside some running water, singing softly to him as he wandered. If he had company on his walk, it would be with one of the few people he loved in the world, swapping ideas, gentle rhymes, memories and laughter. The day would end as the sun went down on a gilded day, with soft limbs entwined, golden in the fading light. He had had perhaps one or two days like that in his whole life, but they sustained him on days more like the one he was living now, when he had to give good people bad news. Finch had taken it very well, all things considered. He doubted Tom Kyd would be as accommodating.

  His wool-gathering had taken him across the river, his cloak wrapped around him against the flurries of the sleet, returned as dusk began to threaten. Now, he turned into Hog Lane in Norton Folgate, hoping to see the windows of his house dark. That would mean that he could put off the evil hour. But no; every window showed golden. Tom Kyd had his muse, such as it was, on him again and was wandering the house, muttering and declaiming in equal measure and making the maid mad with annoyance as she ran behind him closing doors, trying to keep the heat in.

  Marlowe pushed open the door and nearly knocked the girl over.

  ‘Oh, there you are, Master Marlowe,’ she gasped. ‘He’s at it again. Opening and closing doors. Out in the street shouting things at the sky. Traipsing all the mud in, letting the heat out.’ She lowered her voice. ‘I know he’s a friend of yours, sir, but why do we have to have the mad thing in the house? He treats it like a barn.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Annie,’ Marlowe said, closing the door carefully behind him and hanging his cloak on a peg near it. ‘It’s lovely and warm in here, though; well done for keeping the fires in.’

  ‘It’s not easy, Master Marlowe,’ she said, but her dimples came back under the glow of her master’s thanks. ‘We’re going through coal like nobody’s business. I wish you’d speak to him …’

  Speaking to him was just what Marlowe was trying to avoid, but there was no help for it. He didn’t feel he was speaking out of turn as he told Annie that she wouldn’t have to worry about Master Kyd and his profligate ways much longer.

  Wreathed in smiles, she scurried back to the kitchen, to bank up the fire and get the roast on the spit.

  Marlowe stood in the dark hallway and listened. The house seemed full of noises. Whispering fires, with the coals settling gently together, snuggling down in their red ashy beds, made the timbers of the old place creak and mutter. But above all of that, he could hear a voice rise and fall, underscored by the tread of heavy feet above his head. He took a deep breath and climbed the stairs.

  ‘Tom, I wonder …’ he threw open the door to Kyd’s room and the sentence died unborn. The chamber was empty, except for a cat, stretched out on the hearth enjoying the blaze. The animal looked at him accusingly. If it wasn’t one thing, it was another, it seemed to say. People kept calling his name and then didn’t even have the courtesy to give him even a tiny morsel of fish. ‘Sorry, Tom.’ Marlowe wasn’t a natural pet owner, but it pleased the maid and did no harm to have the creature in the house. It may even keep the mouse population down, though he had seen no proof of that.

  He tried another room, his own. This time, he was more successful. Tom Kyd was standing in the window bay, leaning dramatically against the wall and gazing out into the darkening street, the black expanse of Moor Fields stretching into the distance. He was muttering under his breath and then scratching down words on a scrap of parchment in his hand. His shirt was splattered with ink and he had a wild look in his eye. He took no notice of Marlowe as he walked around the bed and went to stand beside him in the window.

  ‘Tom?’ Marlowe said. He raised his voice as though speaking to a deaf man. He had learned since Kyd had been sharing his lodgings that speaking low and sweetly when Kyd was in full flow was of little use.

  Kyd looked around and then went back to his muttering, as though he had seen no one there.

  Marlowe was wise to this. He found it supremely annoying that Kyd behaved like a caricature of a poet and playwright here, in this house. He wanted to remind him – often did remind him – that he was a poet and playwright himself and didn’t go around behaving like a crazy person. When reminded, Kyd would turn gentle eyes on Marlowe and would pat him gently on the arm, as if comforting a confused child. Thomas Kyd had a hide like a rhinoceros. He was going to need that n
ow, and more.

  ‘Tom!’ Marlowe swung him round, plucking the quill from his fingers and throwing the parchment onto the bed. ‘We must talk and I can’t stand this play-acting any longer. Annie is threatening to give notice for one thing, but also there is a pressing matter which can’t wait. I need to get back to the theatre within the hour, so sit down and listen.’

  ‘How is the rehearsal going? Perhaps I should …’ he looked around vaguely. ‘Some of the actors seem confused about their motivation …’

  Marlowe sighed and pushed Kyd down onto the bed, a sudden grisly image of Foxe impaled on Mistress Isam’s best goose down flitting briefly before his eyes. ‘Tom,’ he said, holding him down with a hand on each shoulder, ‘there is no easy way to say this. Your play is …’ what should he say? Too confusing? Too difficult?

  Kyd’s eyes were wandering past Marlowe’s shoulder, still looking out into the night. ‘Yes,’ he murmured. ‘I should be there. I should not have left it to you, I realize. It needs a poet to understand …’

  Marlowe was grateful. He had not known what to say and suddenly, he did. ‘Your play is rubbish, Tom,’ he said and was pleased to see Kyd’s eyes snap into focus on his face. ‘Utter, unadulterated, unmitigated drivel. No one knows who anyone is. The mad people make more sense than the sane people. Someone may have been murdered, but we can’t work out who or why or even, despite Tom’s best efforts with his scenery, where. And only God knows how. So, the cast have rebelled, they refuse to do it.’

  Kyd smiled slowly and poked Marlowe in the belly. ‘You, Kit!’ he chuckled. ‘You will have your little joke.’

  Marlowe let go of the man’s shoulders and blew out his cheeks in exasperation. ‘I’ll put this simply, Tom,’ he said. ‘I tried to be nice and it didn’t work. So, a long story cut very short. Your play is rubbish. We’re not putting it on. And …’ he looked around at the mess Kyd had made of the room, ‘… I’ll give you till the end of the week, but after that, I must ask you to find lodgings elsewhere.’

  Kyd looked at him. ‘So, what are you saying?’