Witch Hammer Read online

  The cook raised her head and winced with the pain. ‘I think I will, Mistress Merriweather. You know how to clean my pastry board? Scrub it down and rub it with rosemary to keep it sweet. Otherwise the butter goes rancid and taints the paste.’ She went a strange shade of green at the thought and, clapping her hand to her mouth, ran to the door. The girl and the crone could hear from the noises that something had definitely disagreed with the cook. After a few moments, they heard her dragging footsteps as she made her way to her truckle bed tucked under the back stairs. The kitchen was quiet for a moment, with only the settling embers of the cooking fire to be heard. The kitchen was usually loud with shouting pot boys and serving men, but their work was done for the night and they were all out at the wagons, mingling with Lord Strange’s Men – and women – with dreams of the stage and running away to a better life filling their heads.

  The crone looked at the girl, who had started her solitary dance again. She had lived a long time, mostly on her wits, and had learned a lot in that long life. She had once had a name of her own, but her talent for predicting rain, snow and other conditions which could affect her fellow men and beasts had earned her a new one; Merriweather. She cocked her head on one side.

  ‘Stop that, now. You’ve done your work, now go outside and have some fun.’

  The girl stopped spinning and looked at the old woman from under her brows. She was not a pretty girl at first glance, with a glowering look and hair which hung in elflocks round her face, but the crone could see that with a better expression and a ribbon, she could be quite a heartbreaker. There was a moment when the two glances met with an almost audible crackle, but the old woman had been around a long time and no chit of a girl could beat her. Yet. Then, the tension broke and the girl gave one last twirl.

  ‘You’re sure?’ she said, but she was already heading for the door, clapping her hands as if to rid them of any remaining flour.

  ‘Certain sure,’ the old woman said, with a toothless smile. ‘Off you go. Find yourself a nice young man to dance with. It’s not healthy to dance with yourself.’

  With a glance over her shoulder, the girl was gone in a swirl of skirts and shawls and Mistress Merriweather was alone. A snatch of pipe and drum had come through the door with the girl’s exit and the forecaster gave a slow, arthritic turn of her own, one hand shaking on her hip and the other held curved above her head. She stopped and looked around with a sheepish smile to make sure no one had seen her, pulled her clothes into what passed, on her body, for tidiness, and then went back to her seat in the inglenook and her thoughts.

  Outside, under the spread of a glorious chestnut tree, Lord Strange’s Men were taking their ease. Nat Sawyer was entertaining a couple of the village girls behind the tree, to an accompaniment of smothered giggles. There were tricks he could do with various parts of his body which the rest of the troupe preferred not to know about. A couple of the women had the details but could never bring themselves to talk about it. Thomas, still an innocent in many ways despite his best efforts, thought it might be something to do with being double jointed. Martin was making the most of Alleyn’s absence and had been last seen slipping away into the coppiced wood to the west of the estate with one of the more attractive household servants. Joseph was asleep in the arms of his favourite companion, alcohol, and Ned Sledd was playing his favourite role of actor-manager, standing legs akimbo like the old king and for much the same reason; it was a stance calculated to make lesser men quake and peers to step aside. A gaggle of impressionable youths surrounded him. He bowed, cleared his throat and stepped forward a pace.

  ‘Gentles, all,’ he began.

  Thomas, sitting to one side mending the hem of his dress, groaned. Nothing good ever came of it when Sledd began that way.

  ‘Gentles, all,’ Sledd repeated, with a venomous glare at Thomas. ‘I give you a few lines from a play which I penned as a lad, Rafe Roister Doister.’ He bowed low to hide his grin; he loved these country places that had never heard of Nicholas Udall and all his works.

  ‘I thought Nicholas Udall wrote that,’ came a voice from the crowd.

  Sledd straightened up, leaned back from the hips and boomed back, ‘Pen name, good sire. My pen name merely.’

  ‘I thought Nicholas Udall was dead,’ the voice continued. ‘And I thought he was done for buggery.’

  Sledd shaded his eyes and looked into the crowd but could see no one in particular that he knew. Some trouble maker; there was one in every audience. He straightened again and struck his favourite stance, one leg held stiffly in front of him, one arm flung out, one hand on his heart. He dropped his chin on his chest and growled, ‘From Rafe Roister Doister. A snatch only, for your delight.’ He took a deep breath in through his nostrils and exhaled like a winded horse. ‘Where is the house I go to, before or behind? I know not where, or when, or how I shall it find?’ He took another whistling breath and changed arms.

  Recognizing that his leader was about to forget the next line and not wishing to witness the sorry scene, Thomas rolled quietly off his stool and crept on hands and knees around the tree. Nat Sawyer and his audience looked at him with startled eyes and Thomas grew up several years in one second. He quickly turned away but with an unforgettable image burned forever into his brain.

  Covered in confusion, he blundered off across the sheep-cropped grass, towards the coppiced wood, deciding on his destination as he went by veering away from the cries of obvious delight coming from behind a big elder clump. Looking over his shoulder, he missed his footing and went flying over an ivy-covered stump and lay there, face hidden in his arms, waiting until he felt steadier.

  ‘Are you hurt?’ A voice from above his head startled him, and he looked up slowly. At first, he could just see a pair of feet, bare and rather dirty, leading to slender ankles which in their turn disappeared under the frowsty hem of a skirt. Looking onwards and upwards, the next thing he saw was an apron, kirtled up into the waistband of the dress and above that a pair of swelling breasts under a hastily knotted shawl. Above that, a smiling face, not pretty, not clean, but friendly.

  Thomas scrambled to his feet and dusted himself off. Something of his acting persona had rubbed off on him over the years, and he liked to look nice in company. Sometimes he had to hold himself in check to keep the girl within in her place. ‘No,’ he said, consciously trying to lower the timbre of his voice. ‘No, it was just a trip.’

  Now he was on his feet, he could look the girl in the eye, but only just. She was tall and well made, with a body that looked almost as hard and boyish as his own. He found himself wishing he could make his breasts look as good as hers in a gown. She was still smiling, with her head on one side, making an elflock fall over one eye. She brushed it aside and tucked it behind one ear. ‘Are you with the actors?’

  ‘Mmm.’ Thomas decided that until he could get his voice a little lower, he would stay in the safety of mumbles. Perhaps she would think he was just too masculine to speak. It seemed to work for George, the stupidest of all the actors, who always played third spear-bearer and who had shoulders like linen presses and the intellect of one of the bed sheets within. He had a wife and six children back in London, so a grunt must have done the business at least that many times.

  She stepped forward half a step and put her hand on his chest, rubbing just one finger tip up and down the laces of his jerkin. ‘That must be exciting,’ she said, huskily. ‘I’m a maid in the kitchen of the big house.’ She tossed her head in the direction of Clopton Hall. ‘It’s very . . . dull.’ Somehow, without Thomas being aware of how it had happened, her finger had pulled the laces loose and his jerkin flapped open. In another deft movement, she had pulled the shirt loose and her hand was now scratching at his chest. Somehow, his breathing seemed to be giving him trouble and he had to really concentrate on not passing out.

  She smiled at him and her face seemed very near. He could smell the sweet pastry smell of her, like honey and warm butter. Her teeth gleamed in the half light and h
er eyes flashed. He tried to pull his head back. He had told everyone that it was just an old wives’ tale, all that about his balls and his voice and all, but when push came to shove, he didn’t dare risk it. But it seemed that her reach was longer than his and her mouth found his and he had no choice but to kiss her.

  And such a kiss. He felt as though his brain was falling out through his mouth, to mingle with hers in a tangle of tongues and teeth. And then he felt the hand in his breeches and knew he should stop all this, before his voice was gone for ever. And then he felt her leg wrap around his and something warm envelop what he had tried not to think of too much lately, for fear. And he thought of Nat Sawyer, and he thought of Martin, and he thought of his career, such as it was. And the ground came up to meet them and he stopped thinking altogether.

  Back under the chestnut tree the audience was beginning to melt away. Ned Sledd had begun to descend into random lines from any play he could remember, Joseph was awake now and joining in like some kind of demented echo, making it hard for the actor-manager to keep his concentration on his performance. Nat Sawyer’s party trick had reached its natural climax and the girls had wandered away, giggling.

  Suddenly, from the coppice there came a yell to freeze the blood. Sledd’s head snapped up and he counted his flock with a quick flick of the eyes, then grinned. He looked at the women, sitting to one side, chatting together now it was too dark to sew and saw they were smiling.

  ‘Martin’s in good form, by the sound of it,’ he said and they all laughed.

  Through the dense foliage of the tree, fat drops of rain began to drum faintly on the hands of the leaves, like distant applause.

  In the coppiced wood, behind the elder clump, Martin sheltered his temporary love under his cloak, a gentleman player to the last.

  And deeper in the wood, Dorothy sheltered under the panting figure of Thomas and turned her face up to the rain. And laughed.

  The rain which had come with the night was lashing down and with it had come a wind which was roaring through the oaks that ringed Clopton Hall. Every casement in the building rattled and in the Great Hall Sir William’s dogs whined in their sleep before the huge unlit logs in the grate, dreaming of the horns and the hunt.

  Kit Marlowe was still awake when he heard the tap on his bedroom door. The bed was high and soft with feather down and the candle flickered its lurid shapes on the tapestries, velvet and brocade. Men like Marlowe often slept alone but his dagger was always within reach and he slid it noiselessly from its sheath now before sliding off the four poster and snuffing out the candle. He waited behind the heavy oak door and felt rather than saw the thing creak open. Candle shafts darted in the darkness and he heard a voice.

  ‘Master Marlowe? Master Marlowe – are you awake?’

  She almost floated into the room, her face lit by the candle, her eyes bright. He couldn’t see her heart, of course, but he guessed it would be pounding, like his. Joyce Clopton, his host’s daughter, had long dark hair, hanging in a long and tapering plait now down her back, rather than the elaborate pearl-speckled coil wound around a cap as she had worn it at dinner. Her feet were bare and she clutched a long velvet cloak around her, her left hand holding it closed at her breast.

  ‘Tolerably,’ he murmured and she spun at the voice behind her, gasping as she saw the outstretched steel. He caught her wrist with his left hand and steadied it and the candle. ‘My Lady,’ he said, ‘it is late and I am not sure that Sir William . . .’

  She pulled away sharply and placed the candlestick on the table. ‘This is not exactly a social call, Master Marlowe. And you need have no fear. Neither of us shall be compromised.’

  ‘Even so,’ he said. ‘For decorum’s sake. I am a guest in your father’s house.’

  ‘Quite so,’ she said. ‘Quite so.’

  For a moment they looked at each other, the squire’s daughter and the playwright. Then she cleared her throat. The man was in an open shirt, to be sure, but he still wore his leather pantaloons. And his dagger was tucked back into the belt at the back. There was no doubt about it, he was very attractive, especially when compared to some of the spavined aristocrats her father had trotted out for her delight over the last months. But she was not here on pleasure bent, so she put his looks to one side.

  ‘What are you, Master Marlowe?’ she asked, arching her neck and looking up at him.

  ‘Somewhat surprised,’ Marlowe said.

  ‘No.’ The ice broke in her voice for the first time. ‘No, I mean, what are you? Father says you are a playwright.’

  ‘That is so.’ Marlowe nodded and relit his candle with the tinder flash. She watched his eyes sparkle in the half light and smoulder in the half dark.

  She moved away from the table and sat down on a gilded chair in the corner. ‘And what else are you?’ she asked.

  ‘I am . . . I was a scholar,’ he told her. ‘From Cambridge. Corpus Christi College.’

  She frowned. ‘I thought the men of Corpus went into the Church.’

  He found himself chuckling, for all sorts of reasons, but mostly in surprise. ‘You are well informed, My Lady; Cambridge from here is the far side of the moon.’

  ‘When I was a girl,’ she said softly, ‘I used to look for the man in the moon. When the moon was full in the faerie time.’ She smiled, a smile warm with memories of long ago. ‘I never found him.’ She flashed him a glance, suddenly serious, direct, urgent. ‘Perhaps I have now.’

  ‘My Lady?’ he crossed the room and placed his candle beside hers. He perched on the side of the bed and waited.

  ‘At dinner,’ she said, ‘you spoke of . . . oh, so many things. Of Tamburlaine, the Scythian shepherd. Of the great magician, Dr Faustus. Have you written plays about these men?’

  ‘No,’ he said, laughing. ‘One day, perhaps. But . . . I have to get to London first. That’s where my destiny lies, if I have one.’

  She nodded. ‘You are ambitious, Master Marlowe,’ she said.

  ‘One of my many failings.’

  ‘And you need money – to get your plays accepted, I mean. They say the Master of the Revels does not come cheap. Nor, I’ll wager, does the Lord Chamberlain.’

  Marlowe nodded. ‘Palms will have to be greased, that is true.’

  ‘Here, then.’ She threw him a leather purse which appeared from nowhere under her robe. He caught it expertly. It was heavy and it jingled. He weighed it in his hand.

  ‘My Lady.’ He smiled. ‘I cannot accept such kindness. I have a patron, of sorts, in Lord Strange . . .’

  ‘It is not kindness, Master Marlowe,’ she said. ‘It is a down payment for a little task I’d have you undertake. There’s more – much more – when the job is done.’

  He carefully laid the purse down and leaned back. ‘What job?’ he asked.

  ‘That,’ she said, pointing to his waist with a curving finger, ‘that dagger behind your back. How good are you with that?’

  ‘I get by,’ he said.

  ‘Tell me, Master Playwright, Master Scholar . . . have you killed a man?’

  He sat upright slowly. ‘No one told me you worked for the Star Chamber,’ he said. He saw Joyce Clopton gnaw her lip. She was in too far to pull out now and time was of the essence.

  ‘What do you think of my father, sir?’ she asked him.

  ‘A good man,’ Marlowe said, ‘a generous host. And a good father, I am sure.’

  ‘The best.’ She smiled fondly. ‘My mother – God rest her soul . . .’ She crossed herself, instantly regretting it and putting her hands behind her back as a child would do when caught out. ‘My mother bore four children and I alone survived. Father says I am his all. And I’ve never wished that I was a man more than I do tonight.’

  Marlowe shrugged. ‘You’ve lost me.’

  ‘My father is a good man, but he is too kind, too soft. There is one in the town who intends to ruin him.’

  ‘Sir Edward Greville.’ Marlowe nodded.

  ‘You know him?’ Joyce said, wide eyed. />
  ‘I know of him,’ Marlowe corrected her.

  ‘A fouler bastard never drew breath,’ Joyce growled. ‘He will hound my poor father to his grave, unless . . .’

  ‘Unless?’ Marlowe knew exactly where this was going.

  She looked at him from under heavy eyelids. ‘Unless you kill him.’

  The wind rattled the casement and the curtain rippled like something living as the candles shivered and shook. Marlowe got up from the bed, taking the purse with him and crossed to the girl. He lifted her gently to her feet and holding out her right hand, placed the gold into it. ‘I am a poet,’ he whispered. ‘A playwright, a scholar. I am not a murderer.’ And he turned away.

  For a moment, there was silence, then the rustle of her gown and when he turned back, Joyce Clopton stood naked before him, the robe at her feet, her shoulders and breasts gleaming in the candlelight. He kept his eyes on hers, although he was aware of the shape of her, her waist and the swell of her belly leading down to the dark v between her legs.

  ‘If not money,’ she said, ‘whatever is your wish . . .’

  The silence between them now was an eternity. Then Kit Marlowe, gentleman as well as scholar, bent and picked up the gown, carefully draping it around her shoulders, covering her nakedness. Joyce Clopton did not know what to do. Men the length and breadth of the country would have given their right arm for what Marlowe had just turned down. And in a burst of frustration and shame, she sobbed violently, her body convulsing with the humiliation and failure.

  He held her close, smelling the fragrance of her hair and wiped away the tears that ran down her cheeks with his still ink-stained thumb. ‘I will not take your gold,’ he told her. ‘Nor will I take you. But tomorrow –’ he held her at arm’s length and held up her chin – ‘tomorrow I will take me a walk into this Stratford of yours and pay my respects to Sir Edward Greville.’

  ‘You . . .’ Her tear-filled eyes widened with hope, but he placed a hand softly over her mouth.

  ‘This,’ he said, sweeping out the dagger from the small of his back. ‘This I will leave here.’ And he threw it on to the bed. ‘Now, My Lady,’ he said. ‘It is late.’ He turned his back so she could scramble back into her gown and cloak. Turning back, he snatched up her candle and handed it back to her. ‘It’s a wild night,’ he added, as the window shook again, ‘but when it’s over and the clouds have gone and the moon’s awake, look again for that man. Perhaps you will be able to find him now.’