A Tip for the Hangman

by Allison Epstein

  Tom rested his head in the space between the halves of Kit’s ribcage. It felt like home still, despite everything. “Get some sleep,” he said. “Remember what tomorrow is.”

  “Wednesday?”

  Never too dark or too late for Kit to revel in missing the point. “Yes, Wednesday. When Faustus opens.”

  Kit raked his fingers backward through his hair. “Ah, Christ. That’s tomorrow.”

  Tom hadn’t read a word of Doctor Faustus, though he’d heard Kit rage against the censor, watched him stay awake long into the night, lit by the flickering orange of a dying candle, blotting eight lines of every ten. God knew what he’d bring to the Rose tomorrow.

  “I can’t go,” Kit said.

  Tom frowned. That wasn’t like Kit. The first time The Jew of Malta took the stage, yes, Kit had thrown up behind the theater from nerves, but then he shoved his way to the front of the pit, to get the best possible view. “Why not?”

  “Henslowe will run it all summer,” Kit said. “My name makes him money. I have time.”

  “Why not?” Tom said again.

  Kit sighed. “I have an appointment.”

  Tom shifted onto his side to look at him. When Kit made appointments, he disappeared for months and came back haunted, half-healed scars whittled into his wrists, meeting strangers at the scaffold.

  Kit smiled. It was the most open Tom had seen him in days. The most like his old self. Tom knew at once that he was lying. “It’s not like that,” Kit said. “I’m only going to Deptford. Deliver a report, get shouted at by Robert Poley, come home. I’ll be back before dark.”

  Tom wanted to believe that. But even if Kit wouldn’t tell him the truth, there was nothing he could do. Secrets were woven into the fabric of them now. Look what happened the last time he demanded the truth. He could only pretend it didn’t hurt, which was impossible, and love Kit, which was the simplest thing in the world.

  “Just try to sleep tonight.” Tom brushed Kit’s hair off his forehead, then, smiling at the shameless way Kit leaned into his touch, kissed the hollow of his throat. Kit’s breath caught. The simplest thing in the world. “Unless you’d rather pass the time some other way.”

  “You have a case in the morning,” Kit said. Yes, said the faint strain in his voice.

  “And you have an appointment,” Tom said, his voice a low purr beneath Kit’s ear. Kit’s breathing rasped with longing. Nothing mattered but that, this familiar hunger, and the press of Kit’s body yearning against his own. “But I care more about this.”

  Forty-Seven

  Kit didn’t remember falling asleep. He remembered Tom’s body, warm and familiar in the dark, Tom’s gentle touch, the wave of pleasure that silenced his thoughts. He remembered the soft glow of after, Tom stroking Kit’s hair, Kit lazily bathing him with kisses, tasting the salt of Tom’s sweat sharp on his tongue. Relaxed, for the first time in weeks. And then hours passed, hours he didn’t remember losing, leaving him foggy, with Tom nudging him awake. Tom’s beauty was agonizing in the golden hour of morning. Blurred through a slight haze, the sunrise cast a sort of corona around his edges. Almost enough to make Kit consider waking with the sun more often, for more mornings like this.

  “I’m off.” Tom’s voice was rough, unused for hours.

  Kit stretched and snaked out of bed. Tom had dressed for the courts, while Kit wore nothing but a worn pair of breeches, but that didn’t matter. The light shifted as he moved, and Tom looked ordinary again, human.

  “I’ll be at the Rose this afternoon,” Tom said. “After my case. If you change your mind.”

  Kit’s mind wasn’t his to change. “Tell me how it goes,” he said.

  “Of course.” Tom twined an arm around Kit’s waist, pulling him closer. “I’ll give you a glowing report of your own genius.”

  “Scene by scene.”

  “Line by line, you arrogant disaster,” Tom said, smiling. “Be careful today.”

  “Aren’t I always?”

  Tom’s eyebrows arched skyward. “You’re lucky I love you.”

  Kit said nothing. After the night before, words evaded him. He had nothing to say, nothing but I love you, which even in his mind felt pathetic. I love you. As if that were ever enough. He’d have words again that night, after the play, after all this. It didn’t matter if he couldn’t find them now.

  They kissed, soft and brief, like the dregs of a dream.

  Tom ran the pad of his thumb along the bow of Kit’s lips, then gave a boyish smile. “I’ll be back tonight,” he said, kissed him once more like a door closing, and slipped into the hall.

  Kit heard his footfalls on the stairs. Heard him exchange empty words with the landlady, rendered unintelligible by the two floors between them. Heard the building’s door snap shut. He stood motionless, feeling more tired and lost than before he’d slept. He glanced at the hearth, where the ashes of a recent unsigned letter rested against the stone.

  The Bull and Boar. Deptford Strand. Wednesday at ten. Come alone.

  The ashes rippled with his movement as he paced to the window. He watched Tom, below, merging with the crowd until he disappeared down an alley toward Temple Bar. Kit turned and reached for a shirt, as the morning light wiped the heel of its palm across the room’s shadows and smudged them into day.

  Deptford. Very well, then.

  Forty-Eight

  It would rain soon. Eleanor Bull could tell.

  So close to the river, dotted with ships waiting to sail for Gravesend and to sea, Deptford’s business swelled and ebbed with the sky. She could feel the thick, damp air in her bones, and in the rhythm of the dockhands drifting through the tavern. Outside, the river reflected metallic sheets of cloud. As Eleanor scrubbed at a sticky smudge of beer on a back table, she could hear the dull rumble of thunder, a faint thrumming somewhere far off. It would rain soon, and a crush of sailors would flee the river to her house, to drink and curse and brawl and wait out the storm. She sighed, tired at the thought. Bad form to curse God for too much business, though. And she’d take the custom of anyone who could pay.

  The best way to do business. Palm open, eyes closed.

  She repeated the thought as the door opened. The salt smell of fish and rotting timber crept in at the man’s heels, with the musk of clouds about to burst. She abandoned the table, staring. The man looked back, aware of being stared at.

  From the way they’d carried on, those smooth-smiling fellows from Whitehall, she’d expected their man to be the devil himself. But this fellow was nothing. This small, slim man with gray-flecked brown hair and that easy, catlike way of moving, dressed poorly as any sailor dropped from a French ship. Gregory must be going soft in his old age. Five years ago he’d have recognized a losing cause when he saw one. Five years ago he’d have remembered how easy it was to outbid a single man.

  Spotting her across the room, the young man approached, drifting more than walking. The sailors’ eyes slid over him unseeing. The kind of face no one remembered. The kind of man prone to disappearances.

  “Marlowe?” she said.

  He nodded without a word.

  “They’re waiting upstairs,” Eleanor said, gesturing with the rag. “The private room. You need anything, come find me,” she added, though she didn’t know why. She wiped both hands on her apron. Her fingers brushed against the curve of a gold sovereign, which she’d left there in the pocket, as a reminder.

  The man turned. “Thank you.”

  Eleanor watched as he disappeared to the floor above. Then she turned back to the stain on the table, scrubbing until her elbow ached.

  Palm open, eyes closed, after all.

  * * *

  —————

  Standing in the pit at the Rose, Tom took another half step back. When the play began, he’d been one row of bodies away from the boards. Tom could have touched Ned Alleyn�
��s boot as he strode onstage, book in hand, to deliver his opening speech. By now, Tom stood nearly in the street. He couldn’t bear being closer. It was like standing inside Kit’s mind.

  So these were his monsters in the ceiling.

  So this was why Kit screamed in his sleep.

  “It strikes!” cried Ned onstage—cried Faustus in Wittenberg. “Now, body, turn to air, or Lucifer will bear thee quick to hell.” He sank to his knees, began to raise his hands in prayer, then let them fall heavy to his sides. Useless. Prayer offered nothing now.

  The Rose echoed with the sound of a tolling bell, unseen and everywhere.

  One.

  Two.

  * * *

  —————

  Kit had found himself among strange combinations of people before, but never a trio quite like this. He stepped inside the Bull and Boar’s private room, trying to make sense of the group waiting for him.

  Robert Poley, well-dressed and smirking, seated at the table, where an ignored game of backgammon had been set. A man Kit didn’t recognize, dressed with the cheap flash of a Southwark native, tawny hair streaming, rangy limbs sprawling from the chair. And the third, a copper-haired man who’d been standing at the window with his back to the door, and who, as Kit entered, turned.

  For a long moment, Kit was certain he’d lost his mind.

  Poley he’d expected. The second fellow was a shock—if Poley was enlisting fresh faces from the seedier parts of the city, it couldn’t spell anything good. But there was no explanation on earth or in hell for what brought Nick Skeres to Deptford.

  “Nick?” Kit said, laughing, not because it was funny, but because his mind didn’t know what else to do. Nick Skeres, arrogant, privileged Nick, holed up in Deptford with the queen’s spies? Nick belonged in some country estate, doing whatever people with money did. Not with men like these. Or, for that matter, with men like Kit.

  Nick moved to sit at the edge of the bed. “You sound surprised,” he said.

  “You don’t sound surprised enough,” Kit said.

  “We keep the same circles, it seems.”

  No one kept the circles Kit kept. Even as he spoke, Nick wouldn’t meet Kit’s eyes. Instead, he looked intently at his hands clasped between his knees, as if expecting them to do something more interesting than continue to be hands.

  “Well, this is a charming reunion,” the tawny-haired man cut in.

  Kit turned around to face the other two, heart humming. He couldn’t afford to be distracted, not even by Nick. Poley wasn’t a man you turned your back on. Neither was this new fellow, who carried on seeming comfortable as anything, watching the scene with mild interest.

  “Kit Marlowe,” Kit said to the stranger with a pointed nod. “Though I imagine you knew that already.”

  “Who among us doesn’t know the morning star of Bankside?” the man said smoothly. “Ingram Frizer. Friend of both your fellows here. An honor, really.”

  Kit wiped his palms against his breeches, then took a vacant chair and edged it back, widening the distance between himself and Frizer. The duration of his acquaintance with this man could be counted in seconds, but there was something about Ingram Frizer that made him want to keep three arms’ lengths away. “Right. You don’t mind if I smoke, do you?”

  “By all means,” Frizer said. “Make yourself comfortable.”

  One more reason tobacco was God’s incense. Filling and lighting a pipe kept Kit’s hands occupied and his face impassive. Every public house worth its salt had the accoutrements on hand now, for which he had the glamour surrounding Sir Walter Raleigh to thank. Frizer filled a pipe of his own, raising the lit bowl in a wry toast. Kit inhaled, willing the tobacco to soothe his nerves. Though it always had before, it wouldn’t now.

  “What can I do for you?” Kit said, words cool through the smoke.

  “Rushing into business so quickly?” Poley said with enough condescension to choke on. “Take your time. No need to be common.”

  Common. The word touched something painful in Kit’s consciousness, a bruise he’d thought had healed. Maybe it wasn’t so surprising Nick had fallen into Poley’s company.

  “Shall I call for a drink?” Poley asked, glancing toward the door Kit had left open.

  “If you like.” Kit shrugged. “I don’t drink while working.”

  Poley laughed. “Never took you for a sober fellow. As you like. A glass for the rest of us.” He rose and stuck his head out the door. “Francis!” he shouted.

  Kit flinched, startled by the strength of Poley’s voice. Nick jumped halfway out of his skin.

  Francis—the tapster, presumably—did not materialize, but Kit heard movement below. He took another pull from his pipe, letting his fingers brush the knife handle against his hip. A trail of smoke stretched toward the ceiling and out, splaying tendrils against the closed window before turning back into the room.

  A spy, a criminal, and a Cambridge graduate. Kit’s mind spun, trying to work out the point at which those three spheres could intersect.

  You, said a voice in Kit’s head. It’s you.

  * * *

  —————

  Three.

  As if summoned, masked men, hands and arms and faces smeared with soot and filth from the river, flowed onstage. Their arms stretched for Faustus, who knelt with his back to them. In one of the demons, Tom could make out Will’s dark hair and raven eyes through the grime. Even so, he shivered. A dozen devils stood onstage, borrowing the form of Will Shakespeare or not.

  Four.

  * * *

  —————

  “Forgive the question,” Kit said. “But do you three know each other?”

  Frizer smiled. A leonine smile, and one Kit did not trust. “Your master made introductions.”

  That mockery in Frizer’s voice sent a thrill of alarm through Kit. He hadn’t been this edgy since Flushing—playing both sides, each while the other looked on. Frizer took up a backgammon piece and turned it between his forefinger and thumb, a banker checking a coin for authenticity. Kit watched Frizer’s hands. It still seemed unwise to look away from them.

  “Ah!” Poley turned to the door as a boy entered with a bottle and glasses. “Excellent. Thank you, Francis.”

  The boy set his burden on the table. Nervous, he knocked against Kit’s shoulder as he passed. Kit felt the nudge like a shock through his chest. The boy stammered out an apology, keeping his shamed gaze on the floor. Kit focused on his breath and shook his head. Don’t apologize. It’s nothing. Frizer beckoned the boy closer with a crooked finger and slipped a shilling into his palm. An exorbitant payment for carrying a bottle upstairs, but the boy didn’t protest the extravagance. When the boy left, he shut the door behind him. Kit heard a key turn in the lock.

  Not until then did he feel the hollow against his thigh where his knife should have rested. In the same moment, he saw Frizer slip something into the pocket of his doublet.

  Kit sat up straighter. A pickpocket, and a child at that. He had to be better than this. He draped one arm over the back of the chair, circling the bowl of his pipe with the other thumb. He hoped it looked insolent, relaxed. Unafraid. He was a writer, not an actor, but Christ, the stakes for this performance were high.

  Poley poured out three glasses of sack. He tilted an empty one in Kit’s direction, then shrugged as Kit shook his head. Nick drew up a chair and joined them, a nervous phantom at the edge of the quartet. Kit didn’t look at him. One threat at a time.

  “So,” Kit said to Frizer, taking too deep a pull on the pipe, “you’ve been working with Master Poley here, I take it.”

  Frizer grinned. “We’ve a bit of a history. Robert usually calls me in for the dirtier parts of the business, but circumstances change. He’s coming to see the full range of my talents.”

  Kit felt the loss of his knife like the
severing of a limb. “And you?” he said, turning to Nick. “Something happen to your circumstances too?”

  Kit had seen that smirk spread across Poley’s face before. “It’s fair to say he’s become useful,” Poley said.

  “Information is my trade, Poley,” Kit said, his words brittle, “the same as yours. I’d appreciate some at this point.”

  “So would I,” Poley said.

  Kit would not ask Poley to clarify. If they wanted him to understand, that was their responsibility.

  Poley, receiving no response, sighed and took a long drink. “Cecil’s unable to take your report tomorrow,” he said. “Busy man, you understand. Indisposed. Deliver it to us, and we’ll convey it to him.”

  Kit wasn’t fooled for a moment. The list of Cecil’s responsibilities was endless, but no man was that busy. Still, Cecil was an arrogant bastard, and that was Kit’s saving grace. The spymaster would never relinquish command to a slick peacock like Robert Poley and a slippery swindler like Ingram Frizer. And down-on-his-luck Cambridge scholar Nick Skeres? Not likely. No, if Cecil decided Kit’s risk outweighed his reward, he would deal with it in person.

  This was another test, Kit decided, drawing confidence from the thought. Gathering other opinions of his trustworthiness. It helped to explain this motley crew of inquisitors. Three men who could judge Kit in three walks of life: the spy, the scholar, the Bankside rat. Three men who could tell when he was lying. Who could tell when he was afraid.

  Kit swallowed. The hand holding his pipe trembled.

  But he was a poet and a spy. Hard to conjure a pair of professions better suited to lying.

  “Of course,” Kit said—his smile, at least, was steady. “Stop me if you need context,” he added wryly, to Nick.