Witch Hammer Read online

  ‘Is that Lady Wentworth?’ he heard one dowager say. ‘She looks a hundred. And that gown – my dear!

  ‘Good God and all the Saints,’ he heard another gasp. ‘Old Trumbull’s brought his daughter with him. What a freak.’

  ‘Are we to have any fireworks?’ a woman asked in a braying voice which set Marlowe’s teeth on edge.

  ‘We are, Madame,’ Marlowe answered her and bowed to kiss her hand. The lady shivered and smiled coyly behind her mask.

  ‘Are you an actor?’ she asked. ‘I do so love actors.’

  ‘The whole world is a stage, Madame,’ Marlowe said. ‘We men and women are merely players.’ He nodded and moved on, not noticing Will Shaxsper in the shadows, scribbling something down furiously with a quill, resting the parchment on the back of the third flautist. The rest of the orchestra were striking up and he’d be missed in a minute, so he broke away to take his place on the dais.

  ‘No, no,’ Sledd hissed to him. ‘Move further away, man. This bit needs to be kept free. For the procession.’

  The flautist obliged. Nicholas York was sampling a particularly fine claret and chatting to Richard Cawdray. They both knew London and Cawdray had had business recently in the Custom House Quay – did York know it? Yes, indeed. He’d recently been assistant to Sir Walter Raleigh wearing his Comptroller of Wines hat. And Sir Christopher Hatton had been kind enough to commend him. Having dropped names for England, the two men drifted apart and York found himself peering over his mask at the Lady Joyce, one of the few women present who was showing her face. Enjoying the view and the wine he was entirely unprepared for what happened next as he felt the sharp prick of the tip of a dagger in the small of his back. Instinctively, he tried to turn, but felt a further jab and the loss of weight as someone slipped his own weapon from its sheath.

  ‘Not wearing your sword tonight, Nicholas?’

  York did not need to turn to recognize the voice in his ear. ‘Kit Marlowe,’ he said, under his breath. ‘What a pleasant surprise.’

  ‘If only that were true,’ Marlowe said. ‘Are you here for the culture . . . or something more obvious?’

  ‘If you’ll oblige me by taking that pig-sticker out of my back, I’ll explain.’

  Marlowe slid his dagger home and reversing the man’s own in his other hand, returned it to him hilt first.

  ‘And it’s York, by the way,’ York said, ‘at least for the time being.’

  Marlowe smiled and tapped the man’s elbow by way of greeting. He knew Nicholas Faunt of old, whatever he was calling himself today. And he knew the man would have his reasons. ‘Were you looking for me?’ Marlowe asked, taking a goblet from a tray held high by a passing servant, ‘or do I flatter myself?’

  ‘Walsingham has need of you,’ Faunt said.

  Marlowe paused before he sipped, then shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I wasn’t cut out to be an intelligencer.’

  ‘I agree.’ Faunt lowered his mask to smile at a passing lady. ‘You’re a projectioner. Born to it. You’re a mover and a shaker, Master Marlowe. You make things happen, just like me. I can tell it’s in your blood as it is in mine. We share a vaulting ambition and it’s pointless to deny it.’

  ‘The theatre is in my blood, Master . . . York. That’s my life now.’

  ‘So I believe.’ Faunt sipped his wine, laying the mask to one side. ‘You’re with Strange’s Men. Although it took me a while to find that out.’

  ‘Yes.’ Marlowe nodded. ‘I saw you days ago.’

  ‘You did?’ Faunt frowned. ‘Where?’

  ‘On the road. You were following our wagons.’

  Faunt chuckled. ‘My dear Kit, I only got here this morning, by the most circuitous of routes. If it was me you saw, it must have been in Dr Dee’s magic glass, or in another life. But what price this? A mummer’s play performed in the back of beyond? Hardly what I call stardom.’

  ‘We must all start somewhere,’ Marlowe told him. ‘Anyway, this particular back of beyond is a veritable hornets’ nest.’

  ‘Oh?’ Faunt was all ears.

  Marlowe laughed and wagged a finger at him. ‘No, you don’t,’ he said. ‘Stay and watch the show – you’ll like the fireworks. Drink your fill and make the acquaintance of any of these ladies – preferably one without a husband present; but then –’ and he closed to the man, so close he could smell the wine on his breath – ‘then, in the morning, Nicholas Faunt, ride on. Go back to Walsingham and tell him, no.’

  A fanfare shattered the moment and the windows shook and rattled with a sudden burst of coloured stars in the courtyard below. There were oohs and aahs from the assembled company and everyone surged forward to the windows to watch the fireworks whizzing and spiralling across the Clopton lawns.

  Faunt turned to Marlowe, but he was gone. He could have been behind any of the masks in the room, but most had been set aside as their wearers watched the pyrotechnic show. Faunt smiled to himself and wriggled through the crowd to get to the front. It didn’t matter how sophisticated a person might become, he thought, and he was very sophisticated indeed, there was nothing quite like a firework show to bring a bit of a lift to the spirits. Soon, he was oohing and aahing with the rest.

  Towards the back of the room, Marlowe found William Clopton, watching the crowd watching the fireworks and looking, if not exactly happy, then at least more content than seemed usual with him. He turned to Marlowe.

  ‘They seem to be enjoying the show so far,’ he said.

  ‘Everyone loves fireworks, Sir William,’ Marlowe said, ‘and Ned is really doing you proud tonight. But the play’s the thing.’

  ‘I’m sure you’re right, Master Marlowe,’ Sir William agreed, ‘but before the play, I have one last surprise for my guests. We’ll wait until the sparks have finished flying and then my steward will announce it. Can you see Joyce?’ He sounded suddenly rather on edge and craned now one way, now another, trying to pick her out in the press of people over by the window.

  ‘I saw her a few moments ago,’ Marlowe reassured him.

  ‘Was it her, though? It’s hard to tell with all these masks. I wasn’t happy about them, but she did insist.’

  ‘Well, an unmasked masque would have disappointed many of your guests,’ Marlowe said. ‘From what I have seen, many of them are taking advantage of the anonymity to be . . . shall we say, friendly with their neighbours?’ He smiled at Sir William, who looked back at him with his usual air of depressed puzzlement.

  ‘Friendly with neighbours with whom they are not wont to be so bold.’ Marlowe would have to spell it out next time, he could tell. There are only so many ways you can tell a man that his neighbours and guests were planning to use his house as a cover for a night of debauchery and he had almost run out of the polite ones already.

  ‘No, I’m sorry, I . . .’ The man’s parchment cheek flushed with an uneven purplish-red. ‘Master Marlowe, do you mean what I think you mean to tell me?’

  Marlowe wasn’t sure, but nodded his head. It was the simplest way, if this conversation was to move on at all.

  ‘I had no idea . . . these people are respectable townsfolk . . . what can they be thinking?’

  Marlowe put an arm around the old man’s shoulders. ‘It’s better you don’t know, Sir William,’ he said. ‘They will be discreet, they will have to be. And who knows, behind the masks they may well end up coupling with their own husband or wife, and then no harm done.’ He looked up at the window. ‘Look, the fireworks are over. Have your steward bring on the next surprise.’

  ‘I feel a little unwell, Master Marlowe.’ Sir William Clopton certainly didn’t look too healthy, with a deathly white pallor settling upon his purpled cheek. ‘Please announce my steward to my guests. Have them gather round.’

  Marlowe stepped forward a pace, glad to move away from what had become a very difficult situation. He clapped his hands and the buzz of conversation died away as all faces, most behind masks again, turned to him. ‘My Lords, My Ladies, all of Sir William’s guests
, please step this way for a special surprise from the renowned kitchens of Clopton Hall. Please gather round but make way for Sir William’s steward and his great surprise!’

  There was a smattering of applause and the guests moved closer to the trestle table which had been set up down the middle of the room. With a stately step, Boscastle came through the big double doors, flanked by two maids. They all carried covered platters, which they placed carefully on the table in a place already cleared in readiness and then the maids stepped back. Boscastle, with the perfect timing of an old retainer, lifted the left-hand cover with a flourish and the people gasped in admiration. On the dish, set against the silver and gleaming like gold in the candlelight which filled the room, was a perfect rendition of the town of Stratford, made of glossy pulled sugar. The river which ran through the fairy tale town had a sprinkling of crumbled loaf sugar to show where it tumbled over the weir and the buildings were exact, down to a tiny weathercock on top of the church spire. Everyone craned forward to see and to exclaim at the amazing workmanship. Just outside the door, in the darkened corridor, the pastry cook wept happy tears.

  Turning to his right, Boscastle whipped off the right-hand cover to reveal this time another view of the nearby countryside, this time of the woods and deer park around Clopton, but carved this time entirely out of loaf sugar, except for the tiny deer and promenading people, which were made out of glossy caramel. Those close enough to see could pick out details such as the ruffs around the tiny figures’ necks, which were made of icing. The pastry cook was beside himself with delight at the applause and the cries of amazement. He hugged himself with anticipation. The central platter contained a model of Clopton Hall itself, made entirely of pulled and spun sugar. Its glossy walls were surrounded by the thinnest threads of spun toffee, pulled over and over on two wooden spoons and laid with care on the whole, so that the house looked as though it were surrounded by solidified sunshine. He held his breath, listening for the sounds from inside the room. He heard the rustle of Boscastle’s best livery. He heard the chink as the cover touched the platter’s edge as the man lifted it aloft. He heard . . . a scream. That can’t be right! He rushed in through the doorway, heedless of protocol and pushed Boscastle aside. If the fool had spoiled his creation he would kill him where he stood.

  The creation certainly was spoiled, but not by Boscastle, who stood as though frozen, the heavy cover of the silver platter quivering in his still upraised hand. In the middle of the spun sunshine and many chimneys of Clopton Hall, lay a grotesque doll. It lay on its back, with its limbs splayed out, as though dropped from the sky to plummet to its death on the sharp-tiled turrets of the house. Through its chest was a wicked thorn, curved and vicious, with what looked like blood staining the laced jerkin and square collar of the shirt. It had dark horsehair sewn roughly on to its overlarge head and on the forehead was a mole. In many ways it was a tribute to the model maker’s art that everyone around the table knew that it was a poppet made to represent Ferdinando Stanley, Baron Strange, who even now stood at one end of the trestle table, staring at it in horror.

  Marlowe was at the far end of the room from his new friend and he immediately started to make his way around the back of the pressing crowd to get to his side as soon as possible. Out of the tail of his eye he saw Faunt, on the other side of the trestle, do the same. They reached Strange almost together and elbowed people aside to stand one on either side of him. Strange flinched at the touch of Faunt’s hand on his arm, backing away into Marlowe and grabbing at his wrist.

  ‘Kit,’ he said, through dry lips. ‘Who is this? Did he make that thing?’

  Faunt kept silent. He knew that Marlowe wouldn’t lie.

  ‘No, My Lord. This is . . . a friend, Nicholas York. He is here to help you.’

  Strange looked Walsingham’s right-hand man up and down and gripped Marlowe’s wrist even tighter, leaning back to put all his weight on Marlowe’s chest. ‘He’s lying to you, Kit. His name isn’t York, it’s . . . I can’t remember. I have met him before. In London. At court. His name is . . . his name is . . .’ He turned to look over his shoulder at Marlowe. ‘He is called . . .’ And without turning his head again, he slid down to the ground.

  ‘Step back,’ Faunt said, to those standing near him who were showing a lamentable tendency to gawp. ‘Give him air.’ He looked up at Marlowe. ‘You know him better than I, Kit, although he is right, poor wretch, we have met now and again. Is he fainting through fear? Is he hysterical?’

  Marlowe thought back to Strange’s fall from his horse, his fear of the woman with no eyes and wondered whether this might be the reason for this faint now. But he thought not, on balance. ‘No, I think he is poisoned. Smell his breath.’

  Faunt leaned forward. He wrinkled his nose. ‘Almonds?’ he said, looking the poet in the eye. ‘Can almonds poison a man?’

  ‘No,’ Marlowe said, ‘but I remember when I was a boy, a woman in Canterbury murdered her husband by grinding up cherry stones into his porridge. He took ill and died weeks later. She nursed him devotedly, of course, with nourishing food, which was killing him by inches. She was discovered when the maid finished up his last bowlful and fell ill almost at once. She didn’t die, but said that the porridge tasted of almonds, which of course weren’t in the recipe. Were almonds served tonight?’ He half rose from his crouching position near Strange’s head. ‘Is the cook here?’

  ‘The pastry cook is here,’ Boscastle said, giving the man a malicious little push in the small of the back. There was no love lost between these two at the best of times.

  ‘Well,’ Faunt said, unable to resist taking over the questioning. ‘Did any almonds go into the food tonight?’

  The man shook his head.

  ‘Cherries?’

  ‘The cherry season is over, My Lord,’ the chef said, addressing his answers to Sir William Clopton, out of habit. ‘We have some bottled, but we take out the stones and anyway, we didn’t serve them tonight.’

  Around the table, people stood aghast, holding their stomachs in readiness for the onset of poison, but none came. Then, the mutter began and soon swelled across the room. It was the poppet which had felled Lord Strange. No one knew how, but it had done its dreadful work. Here and there the voice of reason was raised, that the poppet had a thorn through its breast and Lord Strange was not stabbed. That it was stupid superstition. But the story grew and took hold and was growing in certainty even as Marlowe and Faunt lifted Ferdinando Strange to his feet and half walked, half dragged him from the room and up the stairs to his bedchamber.

  Ned Sledd didn’t like the way the evening was going. He particularly didn’t like the expression on William Clopton’s face. The old man was clearly terrified.

  ‘The show must go on, though, surely,’ he said.

  Clopton stopped in his march from the solar. ‘Are you mad?’ he whispered. ‘Finish it. Now. Give them their money back. I want everybody out of my house.’

  Joyce was at his elbow, trying to pour oil on troubled waters. ‘Father, people have travelled for miles . . .’

  He spun to face her, eyes wild and staring. ‘Ferdinando is lying in there –’ he flung his arm behind him in general approximation of where the bedchamber was – ‘and for all I know he’ll be dead by morning. There will be no masque.’ He glanced down and realized he was still wearing his costume of feathers and spangles over his doublet. He tore it away and carried on walking.

  ‘At least,’ Joyce called after him and he turned. ‘At least . . .’ She closed to the old man and leant her forehead against his shoulder and spoke softly so he had to bend to hear. It brought back the intimacies of her childhood and he became more disposed to listen. Joyce was a clever daughter. ‘Let those who have come a long way stay tonight. Tomorrow is soon enough for them to go.’

  Clopton hesitated, then turned his head and kissed his daughter’s ear. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘First thing in the morning.’

  In the same clusters as they had arrived at Clopton H
all, so they left, the ones that had come on foot being the first to leave. Most of the groundlings hadn’t seen or even known for certain what had happened. And that made it worse. They handed in their vizards at the gate as Boscastle’s people saw them all out.

  ‘I’ve always said it,’ one of them commented ruefully, ‘the Devil is loose at Clopton.’

  ‘I’ve never seen anything like it.’

  ‘There’s a curse on the Stanleys, that’s well known.’

  ‘What about the rest of us?’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Well, it was the food, obviously. My money’s on the fish. Not natural. Here we are as far from the sea as you can get and they serve us codfish. Don’t tell me they served it with that much nutmeg except to hide the taste. It was off, mark my words. Not natural.’

  And so it went. The great and the good of the Stratford groundlings robbed of their St George, their Guy of Warwick and their Britannia. There had been rumours that Lady Godiva herself would ride bareback in every sense of the word through the Clopton courtyard, but as soon as they realized that she would be played by some boy, as like as not, most of them lost heart. Only one or two had still been interested.

  In the solar, as the lights burned blue and the candle flames guttered in the wind rising from the west, Kit Marlowe sat with Will Shaxsper on either side of an empty grate. The household had officially retired for the night, in that Sir William had gone to bed leaving strict instructions that he should be woken in the event of any change in Lord Strange’s condition.

  Marlowe held the poppet in his hand, staring at it.

  ‘Must you do that?’ Shaxsper asked him.

  Marlowe looked up. ‘Afraid of dolls, Master Glover?’

  Shaxsper shook his head. ‘I’ve seen this before,’ he said softly. ‘No good will come of it. Put it down, Master Marlowe.’

  ‘That’s not a bad idea,’ a voice boomed from the darkness and a man appeared, dressed for the road.

  Marlowe was on his feet, hand on his dagger hilt, in one movement. Although he hid it better, he was as jumpy as the rest. ‘Who are you?’ he demanded.