The laughter came from above him, in the trees. He looked around and saw nothing but branches and twigs swaying in the wind. Then a woman stepped from the trees.
She had long dark-brown hair, and he decided the moment he saw her that that color was his favorite for hair in all the world. Her skin was nut-brown, nearly as dark as her hair, and her fingers long as twigs. She looked at him boldly and motioned to him with those fingers, then ran away down the path. He could do nothing else but follow her.
The path widened. She stopped for a moment and turned as if to make certain of him; he saw to his surprise that her eyes were as blue as berries. She hurried along the path to a meadow. More of the nut-brown women sat by a stream and wove garlands out of the flowers around them.
The women reached for her as she ran to them. They bound her hair in a garland of flowers, laughing and calling to one another. When they had done she turned away from him and studied her reflection in the stream. Had she forgotten him? Or had he misunderstood her—had her gaze been disinterested after all?
He followed her through the meadow. The grass was soft, and greener than any April grass he had ever seen. She turned and laughed as he came up to her.
For once in his life he could think of nothing to say. She took a silver flower from the garland in her hair and held it out to him wordlessly. He reached for it, and as he did so the meadow before him, the stream, the women, all disappeared. In the space of a breath he found himself back at the tavern, holding the flower she had given him.
He returned to the tavern the next day. Christopher and Arthur had not come back with him the night before, and he had spent the rest of the evening waiting for them and studying the flower in his hand. He had never seen another like it; its silver petals curved upward and together like the groin of an old church and then unfurled outward.
He wondered where the others had gone to. More than that, he wanted an explanation for everything that had happened, starting with who Arthur was. Did it have something to do with Kit’s intelligence work?
Finally he saw Christopher and another man come into the tavern. The man was stocky, with brown hair and eyes, and he walked with the confident air of the nobility. He looked nothing like the other young men Christopher brought into the tavern from time to time, and Tom wondered who he could be.
But if Kit thought the presence of the other man would keep him from asking questions he would soon learn how wrong he was. Tom was not good at subterfuge, he had no secrets; no one would ever offer him work as one of the queen’s agents. The only way he knew to get answers was to ask outright. “What happened to you last night?” he said.
“Good evening,” Christopher said pleasantly, going to get some supper and a cup of wine. When he came back he said, “This is my friend Will Ryder. Will, this is Tom Nashe.”
“Good evening,” Tom said. “Where did you go last night?”
“Where?” Christopher said, sitting and looking up at him. “Nowhere.”
Not for the first time Tom thought he would never be able to describe Christopher’s expression to his own satisfaction: it was a strange combination of curiosity, arrogance and innocence. And now, watching him, he saw that the other man held the meat he ate with his left hand. That would explain five years of smudged and illegible correspondence, he thought; odd that he had never noticed it before. Kit used the same hand as the devil. It suits him, Tom thought.
“Do you take me for a fool?” Tom said. “I followed you.”
“Did you?”
“Aye, I did. I saw the land Arthur led us to, the trees and the meadow, the women sitting by the stream—”
“Tom,” Christopher said, holding up his hand. The man beside him, Will Ryder, looked amused. “I went nowhere last night. I tried to find Arthur but he had disappeared. This is too much like your last tale, the one about goblins wandering the streets of London. Let’s have a new song, at least.”
“Listen,” Tom said, furious. “I know what I saw. I saw a strange land, and a path through a wood, and then—”
“You have a good imagination, I’ll give you that. Best save it for the stage.”
“Did I imagine this, then?” Tom held out the flower the dark woman had given him. It had not lost any of its color since the day before.
“Nay, I suppose not.”
“She gave me this. And when I took it I found myself here, in the tavern. Look—it hasn’t faded at all since then.”
“Since yesterday.” Christopher did not trouble to hide the doubt in his voice.
“Aye.”
“This is arrant superstition. You—”
“Superstition!” Tom said. He could not remember having been so angry with his friend. “You’re a man who thinks religion, the proper worship of God, is superstition. You’ve closed yourself off to any possibility of the miraculous. It’s no wonder you saw nothing last night.”
No one said anything for a long moment. Tom thought he might have gone too far. He hadn’t meant to become angry, had intended only to ask his friend a few questions. The buzz of conversation in the tavern had not diminished; thank God, he thought, no one had overheard them.
Will Ryder spoke into the silence. “My father,” he said, “thinks God sends plagues to punish unbelievers.”
Christopher looked at the other man. “Do you blame me for the plague, then?”
“Nay. Nay, but I thought—well, I thought that if he was right, then—then you might reconsider. If your life depended on it.”
“Ah. But if I can’t believe in God—if I’m incapable of it—don’t you think that he would know that? Don’t you think he would regard my sudden conversion with suspicion, realizing that I did it only to save my life? If, of course, there is a God.” He looked pleased with the paradox.
“Then you truly don’t believe in God,” Will said. Tom winced; this was not the place for such discussions. But Will did not seem disapproving, as Robert Greene had, but genuinely interested. Tom thought that this man, unlike Greene, would take his friends as he found them.
“Nay,” Christopher said.
“Nor in these—these goblins? Not even when you saw them yourself?”
Tom looked at Will sharply. “What do you mean?” Christopher said.
“Those strangely shaped men you told me about a week ago,” Will said. “Who were they?”
“What strangely shaped men?” Tom asked.
“Whoever they were, they were not goblins,” Christopher said. “They told me they had come to petition the queen.”
“Did they?” Will said. “Then why is it no one at court has heard of them, not even the queen?”
“Why? Probably because they were part of the conspiracy against her. Did you expect them to come forward and explain their business, like the Chorus in a play?”
“What conspiracy?” Tom asked.
Christopher and Will fell silent. Tom, feeling desperately that they would not tell him anything, began to pour out his questions all at once. “Does it have to do with Arthur? Why are you so interested in him? Why did you follow him last night?”
Christopher pushed his hair back from his face and took a bite of mutton before he answered. “Because he told us he was a king,” he said.
“But what business is that of yours?”
Christopher shrugged: “None, really.”
“Is it true that you do intelligence work for the queen?”
Will seemed about to say something. Christopher looked at him and he subsided. Then, “Oh, why not?” he said. “Aye, we’ll let everyone in London in on the secret—we’ll all be conspirators together. You heard, of course, that someone tried to kill the queen yesterday.”
“Aye,” Tom said. “But the assassin shot an actor dressed to look like her instead.” His friend looked a little surprised, and Tom grinned. He might not be an agent of the queen, but he had his own ways of gathering information.
“Will and I were there,” Christopher said, surprising Tom in turn. “Queen Eliza
beth had apparently thought it amusing to trade places with an actor in a masque. The thought saved her life. The actor was killed and the man who shot her captured, but he refuses to name his accomplices.”
“But surely he can’t remain silent forever? Haven’t they—”
“Aye, they’ve tortured him. He’s said nothing. But the odd thing—one of several odd things, really—is that he seemed to expect the audience to rise up against the queen. He had no idea how much her subjects love her.”
“And the other odd things?”
“Arthur was on the stage with him. The assassin brought him out and introduced him as the new king. I don’t know if the plot was Arthur’s idea—”
“Arthur? He wouldn’t—”
“Wouldn’t he? Well, perhaps not. Then he was used by these other men, who intended to put him on the throne but control him the way they might control a puppet.”
“How do you know there are other men involved? Perhaps the assassin was acting alone.”
Christopher ran his hand through his hair again. His friend had been forthcoming so far, Tom thought; he had been surprised at how much Kit was willing to reveal. Would he continue to be open or would he start to dissemble?
“It’s complicated,” Christopher said finally. “I saw a man die over this. Believe me, there are others involved, and next time they may succeed in killing the queen. So you see how important it is to find Arthur.”
Tom nodded.
“Now that you know,” Will said, “will you help us?”
“Of course,” Tom said, surprised. No matter how open Kit became he would never in his life think to ask for help. He began to warm to this man. “Of course I will. What can I do?”
“Tell us if you see Arthur,” Will said. “Try to keep him in sight if he comes back to the tavern.”
He has the most extraordinary smile, Tom thought. “Aye,” he said. “But I fear he’s gone to this new land—that he’s beyond our finding him.”
Christopher returned to the palace that night. As he walked he thought over what he had said, feeling faintly surprised that he had told Tom as much as he had. He wondered why he had done so. Did he think he had to match Will’s openness with his own? But Will had been right: Tom might prove useful. Always assuming, of course, that Tom stayed in this world and did not follow his fancies to Lubberland, or wherever he thought he had been.
Still, he was glad that he had not mentioned Robert Poley. It was important that no one know the name of the man who had engaged him, and especially important that Will not discover it. Will might tell his brother Geoffrey, and Geoffrey—Geoffrey knew something he shouldn’t, of that Christopher felt certain.
People were still awake at the palace, standing and talking in low voices. Candles guttered in iron coronas. He heard his name called by several people, all courtiers he barely knew. There had been fresh gossip since the drama of the day before, and folks were shaken and anxious to share what they heard. Sir Francis Walsingham, the queen’s Principal Secretary, was dead. Fortunately for him, he had been told nothing about the danger the queen had faced and so had died peacefully.
Walsingham dead, Christopher thought as he went up the stairs to his room. He was too tired to take it in. But the confusion at court meant that he would not be expected to do any work for a few days; he could find a quiet place and think about what he had learned.
The next day he made his way to the gallery and sat on one of the cushioned benches overlooking the courtyard. Morning light came in through the leaded windows, illuminating each of the courtiers passing in colors as bright as an old manuscript. Did Walsingham’s death mean that his work here was finished? He knew almost nothing about Poley’s arrangements with the Principal Secretary. But if he discovered the plotters he would certainly be kept on, gratefully rewarded by whoever took over Walsingham’s post. He would have to work quickly, though, before someone newly come to power decided he was unnecessary.
Well, then, what did he know? A man had shot someone he believed to be the queen, an assassin who acted for a group of conspirators. Or did he? What if Tom, of all people, had been right, what if the man had acted on his own behalf? What evidence did he have for a conspiracy, after all, besides the fact that Poley had told him there was one?
Of course there was the note he had seen in the Black Boar, and a note implied traffic between two people at least. “All is in readiness,” it had said. “Our king awaits.” But it had been Poley who had shown him the note.
Nay, that was ridiculous. Why would Poley fabricate a conspiracy? To make himself more useful to the Principal Secretary? The queen faced enough dangers, as he had seen, without having to invent any.
If there was a plot, then, who had taken part in it? The odd folks he had seen his first morning at court had almost certainly had something to do with it. But where were they? He had not seen them since he had followed one of them to that strange meeting. He had gone by their room several times, but they seemed to have left the palace for good. And, as Will had said, no one at court had ever heard of them.
There was always Geoffrey. But Geoffrey had done nothing wrong; his only crime had been to quote Chaucer, and any son of Canterbury could do the same. It was hardly an indictable offense.
And what of Will? If Geoffrey had a part in this wouldn’t his brother be guilty as well? Christopher could hardly imagine Will in the shadowy world of intrigue; his straightforward nature would almost certainly prevent it. Yet Will had told him that he worked for Essex. And did he?
Nay, he was starting to suspect everyone. If he kept on this way he’d end by thinking Philip Potter guilty. He looked out the window at the statue in the courtyard. Mercury, the god of trickery.
He stood and went back to the central stairway. A number of people headed toward the Presence Chamber and he followed, fully expecting to be turned back at the door. But the queen’s guards, as subject to the confusion in the court as everyone else, let him through without a word.
The stage from the masque was still there, and the wheeled castle; probably no one had had time to take them away. A few of the queen’s councilors and their secretaries sat behind a table on the stage and were calling men up one by one to question them.
Christopher took a bench at the back. He saw that the courtiers were being made to state where they had been on the night of the masque, and he wondered what good that would do. If the assassin had acted on the orders of a group then that group had probably been out in the audience, enjoying the acting.
After a while, though, he understood what the queen’s councilors had in mind. The conspirators would not have been in the palace but out in the streets, waiting for the signal to rouse the populace in revolt. Anyone who hadn’t been at the masque, therefore, would be suspect.
Sir Philip Potter came up to testify. “Aye, I went to the masque,” he said. “I was there with my secretary.”
“What is your secretary’s name?”
“His name,” Potter said, looking about him as though the Presence Chamber held clues to the answer. “I know it—nay, don’t tell me—”
Christopher winced. A few people laughed. “We’ll summon your secretary, then,” a councilor said, and someone at his elbow made a note.
“Here—I’ll tell you what it was about,” Potter said. “That’ll prove I was there, wouldn’t it?”
“Not necessarily,” the councilor said dryly.
Potter seeming not to have heard him, began to describe the seven dancers and explain what they represented. “We thank you,” the councilor said, interrupting him. “You may go now.”
Potter left. Christopher did not volunteer to come forward. He knew that Sir Philip was innocent, and he was far more interested in hearing what everyone else had to say. Another courtier climbed to the stage. Christopher recognized him as one of the people who had gathered at the foot of the stairs, watching and laughing while Potter played the fool. “Were you at the masque two days ago, my lord?” the councilor asked.
“Nay, my lord.”
The crowd murmured. “Where were you, then?”
“At a dinner with some friends.”
“Which friends were these?”
“Nicholas Russell, John Stafford, Richard Dyer, Edward White,” the courtier said. The councilor’s secretary hurried to write the names down. “We began with the mutton. Then we discussed the weather, as I remember. It was fine for April.”
Christopher looked up sharply, understanding everything. The strange circle of men he had overheard had been rehearsing what they would say if their conspiracy failed. They had written an entire play that would prove them to have been elsewhere at the time.
“Very well,” the councilor said. “We will summon your friends.” The secretary made a note.
Though Potter could not remember his secretary’s name it seemed that the queen’s councilors knew men with better memories. A man dressed in the livery of the queen came to summon Christopher to the Presence Chamber the next day.
He went with him eagerly. The conspirators he had overheard would be there, and he was anxious to see them. At the chamber he sat on one of the benches and looked around him.
The man who had testified yesterday sat a few rows back, but Christopher could not see his accomplices anywhere. Could they have been frightened off? Had they decided that their careful scheme would not stand up to the scrutiny of the queen’s councilors?
A secretary called his name and he went up to testify. He agreed that he was Sir Philip Potter’s secretary, and that he had been with Potter at the masque. The councilors, satisfied, let him go.
He returned to the back of the room, hoping no one would ask him to leave now that his business was done. The conspirators had still not arrived. The councilors questioned another of the courtiers, and then a secretary called out the names Christopher had waited for. “Nicholas Russell, John Stafford, Richard Dyer, Edward White!”
What ordinary names they had proved to have, after all, these strange men who had plotted to overthrow the queen. Christopher looked around him. To his great surprise a body of men had risen and were heading toward the stage. He had never seen them before in his life.
Strange Devices of the Sun and Moon Page 12
