Secret World Page 5

  In their ones and twos, they left the West Gate, muttering and whispering, eager to carry the news to their friends and neighbours who had not been there. It was definite. That Alice Snow, who was probably no better than she should be, had murdered her mistress for the inheritance. She would be put to the torture, no doubt, and then they’d hang her from the walls of the West Gate. Well, well, well … and her always so meek and mild. A witch, like her mistress, as likely as not.

  ‘Master Constable.’ Kit Marlowe blocked the man’s path at the side door. ‘A word in your ear, Father.’

  John Marley frowned at him. ‘I’ve nothing to say to you,’ he said, ‘shouting at Sir Roger like that. You owe that man …’ But before he could finish the sentence, he felt himself forced backwards, his head banging on the West Gate’s stonework and his son’s dagger glinting at his throat. For too many years, Kit Marlowe had thought about this moment; how, one day, the surly bastard who was his father would push him too far. And now, that day had come. And he had been right in all his daydreaming; it felt good.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me about the will?’ he hissed, staring the man in the face. ‘When I asked you last night whether you had found anything, you denied it.’

  ‘Because it was none of your damned business!’ Marley growled and pushed himself free. Instinctively, Marlowe jerked his blade back. If he hadn’t, he would have cut his father’s throat. ‘Stay out of my house,’ the constable yelled. ‘When I get off duty today, I expect you to have gone.’ And he stormed off to the cells.

  For one moment, both terrible and tantalizing, Marlowe toyed with following him, finishing the job he had started and getting the girl out. Then he remembered his mother, his sisters and little Tom and what that would do to them. And he relented.

  He had never been so glad to breathe in fresh air in his life. The West Gate had been airless and even though the sun was beating down on the cobblestones of St George’s, the stench of corruption had gone. The crowds were still making their various ways home and Marlowe watched Sir Roger Manwood’s carriage disappearing along the road to Haw. He felt suddenly sad, knowing that that was a road he would never take and a house he would never visit again. He had crossed the scourge of the night prowler. And no one did that lightly.

  ‘Is that how they do things here in Kent?’ someone asked him.

  Marlowe turned to find a gentleman standing there, in stylish plumed hat, velvet Colleyweston and elegant Venetians. An impressive Spanish rapier swung at his hip. Marlowe had seen him in the court.

  ‘Sir?’ he said.

  ‘I couldn’t help noticing,’ the gentleman said, ‘that you took a dim view of the proceedings just now.’

  ‘It seemed an injustice,’ Marlowe said, ‘in a place where justice should reign.’

  ‘That’s how it seemed to me, too,’ the man said. ‘You’re Kit Marlowe, aren’t you?’

  ‘I am,’ Marlowe said. ‘And you are …?’

  ‘Oh, you won’t have heard of me.’ The man extended his hand with a flourish of his cloak. ‘My name is Robert Poley.’

  FOUR

  Katherine Marley was used to hard knocks, from the literal ones her husband so often doled out to the ones which left no marks except on her heart; the deaths of her precious babies and now the sight of her beloved son packing his things after only two nights under her roof. She sat on the window sill, her handkerchief pressed to her lips as he emptied the press she had prepared for him, showering the floor with the marigold and lavender flowers she had scented it with. He folded his shirts and hose and put them carefully in his bag. He wanted to shove everything in willy-nilly, to show that he was happy to shake the dust of John Marley’s house from his boots for ever. But he loved his mother, and her tears had softened his resolve. So he packed with care, taking his time. And when the last fine sleeve had found its corner in his bag, he turned to her and opened his arms.

  ‘Come, madam,’ he said quietly. ‘I will not be gone for ever. You can visit me in London, perhaps, one fine day. You can come to the theatre, to the Rose, to see one of my plays. I know Master Henslowe will give you the finest seat, the best in the house. Ned Alleyn will plant the finest words of love that I can write, right here in your ear –’ he tickled her lightly – ‘come, madam. Let me see a smile.’

  She turned her tear-stained face up to his and did her very best. But the lips trembled and the tears spilled over afresh. ‘I can’t bear it, Kit,’ she sobbed.

  ‘But I am probably not even leaving Canterbury,’ he protested. ‘I have unfinished business here.’

  ‘But where will you stay?’ she said, wiping her eyes. That she had to stay with her husband was something she couldn’t change. But to have Kit nearby, if only for a while – even John Marley let his wife go marketing and she could still see her ewe lamb until London reclaimed him.

  Still holding her close and patting her gently, he said, ‘I thought John Moore might take me in. He was my brother-in-law after all, if only for a while.’

  ‘I doubt you will have much welcome there,’ she said. ‘He is married now to another woman and she doesn’t like to be reminded of our Joan, poor dead girl. I should never have let her … but, your father would have it.’

  ‘A school friend then. They can’t all have moved out of Canterbury.’

  ‘Some are still here … but, Kit, why not stay with Master Grijs, Wim Grijs?’ There was something about her tone that made the playwright look down at her, startled.

  ‘Wim, madam?’ he asked, trying to keep the smile out of his voice.

  ‘Wim and I were … could once have … But then your father came along and that was it. Your papa was charming once, Kit, and handsome. And now, it’s too late. There are the children … you children, I should say, because you will be my babies till the day I die. So, here I am – but you’ll find a welcome with Wim Grijs.’

  ‘Quod me nutrit me destruit,’ Marlowe muttered into her hair.

  ‘Poetry, Kit?’ she asked, the brightness back in her voice now she had had a long cuddle with her boy.

  ‘No, madam,’ he said. ‘A motto which perhaps will do for you and me. “That which nourishes me, destroys me”.’

  She looked up and raised a hand to stroke his cheek. ‘Enough of that, Christopher, my Kit, or my eyes will still be red when your father gets home; I mustn’t cry any more.’

  ‘Or you’ll have something to cry about?’ Some things you never forget.

  ‘I have that already,’ she said, pushing him away. ‘Now, do you know how to get to St Thomas’s Lane? Of course you do. Wim Grijs lives at the house at the end, the one with the rose pargeting. Now, be off with you.’ She reached up and kissed him. ‘Don’t leave Canterbury without letting me know, will you?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I won’t leave without letting you know, madam. Perhaps you will visit me at Wim’s. If you know the way.’

  She gave him a playful smack on his backside. ‘You’re not too big to be put over my knee, you know,’ she said. And so it was a smiling Katherine Marley who saw her son out of her husband’s house for the very last time.

  The Night Watch had called the hour and a pale moon lent its rays to the gabled rooftops of Canterbury. Kit Marlowe watched his father’s men patrolling the walls, their halberds at the rest and the wisps of smoke curling back from the silhouettes of their pipes. The moon silvered the highlights of their faces, giving them a ghostly appearance; an imaginative watcher might almost take them for ghosts, back for a short while from beyond to warn of what was to come.

  Marlowe padded his way along St George’s Street where the shadows gathered under the tower of the church where, long years ago, in a freezing February, they had christened the son of John and Katherine Marley. They had named him for the carrier of Christ, but Marlowe had seen too many things done in the Lord’s name of which he was ashamed and he carried no light for the Son of God on his shoulder now. He carried no lantern either because he knew these cobbled streets like the back of his h
and, every twist and every turn. The smell of the tanneries reached him as he neared the gate, a low black space in the grey wall of chalk and flint. Wat Tyler and his rabble had passed this way many times in Marlowe’s great-grandfather’s day, chanting their songs of hate and striking down anyone who stood in the way of their rebellion. Unlettered men who had lived through the plague and the wars, they had been on their way to London to see the boy king who would make all well because he was the Lord’s anointed.

  ‘Who goes?’ Marlowe stopped at the challenge and saw the halberd point gleaming in the half light.

  ‘A friend of Her Majesty,’ he said.

  ‘What colour of friend?’ the voice asked.

  ‘Silver,’ Marlowe answered. ‘Would it could be gold but these are hard times.’

  A guard emerged grinning from the gateway, catching Marlowe’s coin as it spun in air. ‘They are indeed, pilgrim,’ he said. ‘What’s your business?’

  ‘The serving girl, Alice Snow,’ Marlowe said.

  The guard sniggered, weighing the coin before slipping it into his purse. ‘You could find a cheaper mort in the Star,’ he said, ‘and cheaper still at the Cross Keys. You turn left—’

  ‘I know where the Cross Keys is,’ Marlowe said, ‘but I want Alice Snow.’

  The guard shrugged. There was no accounting for taste. The girl in irons inside was too skinny for him. He liked them large – you only had to look at his wife. But that was precisely the point, he didn’t have to look at his wife; which was why he always volunteered for night duty with the Watch, leaving the other onerous task to the lodger.

  ‘I shall have to search you,’ he said.

  Marlowe’s dagger was now gleaming in his hand in a second, the tip tantalizingly near the man’s throat. ‘No, you won’t,’ he said and, spinning the weapon in the air, held it hilt first to the guard.

  ‘This way.’

  He followed the man up the tight spiral twist of the stair, the stones slick with the passage of many shoulders leaning in for balance. He waited while the guard took a torch from the wall-bracket and continued along a wooden landing before dropping down again into the oubliette.

  ‘Mind your footing,’ the guard said as Marlowe gripped both uprights of the ladder and stepped on to the rungs into darkness. He felt his feet land on soft straw and he waited until his eyes grew accustomed to the blackness. Slowly, the shape in the far corner became clear, coalescing from the shadows. Alice was sitting pressed into the niche, iron shackles on her wrists and with a long chain holding her fast to the slime-green wall.

  He knelt beside her on the mouldy straw and pulled a crust of manchet bread and a piece of cheese from his doublet. He watched while the girl ate ravenously, glancing up occasionally to make sure the guard had gone.

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ she mumbled around a mouthful of food. ‘It’s good of you. How did you get past the guard?’

  ‘My usual boyish charm,’ he whispered to her, smiling. He looked closer at her face, brushing away a lock of her hair, grimy from the wall, salty from her tears. There were cuts and bruises and she had the beginnings of a black eye. ‘Who did that to you, Alice?’

  ‘No one, sir,’ she said, touching the tender skin above her eye. ‘I tripped and fell.’ She looked down at her lie; she knew he wouldn’t believe her, but she hoped he wouldn’t make a fuss. It would only be the worse for her if he did. Then, she looked up at him again, fear darkening her eyes even more than a guard’s fist had done. ‘What’s going to happen to me, sir?’

  ‘That depends,’ Marlowe said.

  Alice had finished her smuggled supper now and understood. She knelt up as well as she could and began to haul up her skirts. Marlowe stopped her, smoothing the sodden cloth back into place. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I want to talk to you.’

  ‘What about, sir?’ she whispered, eyes wide. Men had been talking to her, jabbing her with their fingers, slapping her about, for hours. She had nothing left to say.

  ‘What was missing from your mistress’ house?’

  ‘Sir?’

  Marlowe leaned in closer still. The walls of the West Gate had ears, he was sure of that. And if they didn’t, the guard certainly did. ‘Someone ransacked Mistress Benchkyne’s house, Alice,’ he said. ‘Someone who was looking for something. It’s my guess she heard him wandering the house. She surprised him and he killed her. Why was there no furniture in the house?’

  Alice licked her lips. She wasn’t good at secrets, especially when they were somebody else’s. ‘The mistress, sir, she wasn’t right. Not right in the head.’

  ‘In what way?’ Marlowe asked.

  ‘The Lord was coming, sir. The Day of Judgement.’

  ‘A lot of people believe that, Alice,’ Marlowe said.

  ‘No, I don’t mean at the End of Time, sir. I mean now. Well, All Hallows, to be exact.’

  ‘The end of October?’

  Alice nodded. ‘She spoke of it often, sir. To me, that is. She said she must sell all her worldly goods, against the day the Lord would call her to Him.’

  ‘On All Hallows Day?’

  Alice nodded.

  ‘It seems the Lord’s timing was a little off,’ Marlowe muttered.

  Alice looked horrified. ‘That’s a wicked thing to say, sir,’ she said. ‘You have been kind to me and I’ve no right to say it, but taking the Lord’s name in vain … you risk damnation, sir.’

  ‘Every day,’ Marlowe chuckled, but there was no mirth in his voice. ‘What did she mean in her will, Alice? “And the movables thereof, with the whole world”? What was she talking about?’

  ‘I told you, sir,’ Alice said. ‘She wasn’t quite right in the head.’

  ‘Alice,’ Marlowe growled, sounding at once like her father, her priest and every demon in Hell she’d ever read about. The girl’s lip trembled. She was afraid and alone in this darkness, listening as she had been to the rustling of the rats and the whispering of the ghosts. How many of them, she wondered, had sat where she sat now, alone and afraid?

  ‘One thing, sir,’ she spoke so quietly he could hardly hear what she said. ‘She kept it in her linen chest, the one with the false floor. She said it was mine.’

  ‘What is it, Alice?’ Marlowe asked.

  ‘The world, sir, like the mistress said. It’s silver with a single jewel. She said it was worth more than all the riches in the world yet known.’ She looked up at him and tapped her temple, wincing as she touched a bruise. ‘Not right in the head.’

  ‘And where is this world now?’ Marlowe wanted to know.

  ‘In the well, sir, in the little graveyard by St Rhadegund’s Hall.’

  Marlowe knew it. ‘You threw it down the well?’ he frowned. The pit was deep and small and the boys of the King’s School had believed it led right down to Hell.

  ‘No, sir, I lodged it there … two days ago now. It’s five stones from the top, on the west side, beneath the angel.’

  ‘You took it two days ago?’ Marlowe asked. ‘Before your mistress died?’

  ‘She gave it me, sir. Said it should be mine one day anyway, but that it was cursed and she wasn’t sure I could cope with it. Then she said someone was coming to get it and could I hide it somewhere. And I was not to tell her where it was hid, no matter how she might ask me.’

  ‘Who was coming to see her, Alice?’

  ‘The Lord, sir,’ she said. ‘Who else?’

  ‘Who indeed,’ Marlowe said with a smile and got up to go.

  ‘Oh, take care, sir.’ The girl reached up to him as far as the chains would let her. ‘I’ve only had that thing in my hand for moments at a time and since then the mistress has been cruelly murdered and I’m here facing the rope.’

  He stretched out his hand and stroked her cheek. ‘Not if I can help it,’ he said and turned for the ladder, climbing up to the light. He knew his way along the landing without the help of a guttering torch and was soon back at the gate. The guard passed him his dagger.

  ‘Did she give good service, si
r?’ the guard asked with a grin.

  ‘The best,’ Marlowe told him and flashed another coin.

  ‘A gold friend of Her Majesty.’ The guard was impressed. ‘She must have been good for that.’

  But before his fingers could reach it, Marlowe had snapped shut his hand. ‘This,’ he said, ‘is to get the girl to an upper room. I know you have other cells, Master Keeper. Find one with a window. And clean straw. Two square meals a day. And take those damned chains off. Alice Snow’s a danger to no one.’

  ‘I couldn’t do that, sir,’ the guard wheedled. ‘I’ve got my orders from Sir Roger Manwood himself.’

  ‘And now –’ Marlowe took the man’s hand and pressed the gold coin into the palm – ‘you’ve got your orders from me. Weigh it up, Master Keeper – all life’s about balances, isn’t it? Roger Manwood pays you every year what you hold in your hand now. And if you displease him, he’ll sack you and flog you with the cat. Whereas I …’ Marlowe beamed. ‘I will slice off your pocky, your bollocks, your ears and your nose and I will feed them to the fishes in the Stour. Followed by the rest of you. So … are we clear about life’s little balances?’

  Marlowe would have preferred the night to be moonless, but beggars cannot be choosers and so he kept to the shadows. He still knew the streets of Canterbury like the back of his hand; no matter where a man travels, the world of his boyhood will always be the most real to him, where he goes in his dreams. So he had no difficulty in finding the church of St Mary, tucked in the corner of the city wall and the side wall of the dilapidated St Rhadegund’s Hall. The Hall had been a wonder in its day but now the timbers were grey in the moonlight and the pargeting was hanging loose under the eaves. Marlowe stood sunk in blackest shadow and held his breath, listening beyond the night noises for signs that he might have been followed from the gaol. Somewhere out towards the river, a low cry rose to the mad crescendo that was a tawny owl on the hunt. No doubt some water rat or vole had met its end tonight and Marlowe let his ears settle in again to the quiet as the bird crossed the garden on silent wings, its prey dangling from its beak.