Eleventh Hour

by M. J. Trow

  ‘What was he doing?’ Faunt kept his voice level.

  ‘He was … going through Sir Francis’s papers.’

  Faunt’s nostrils flared and he went a shade of purple unusual in a man of his good health. ‘He was …?’

  ‘I was there to do the same myself,’ Marlowe said quickly, ‘and with far less right to do so. If he has become the Spymaster, he needs to know—’

  ‘He could have asked,’ Faunt said, his face now white with anger. ‘He could have asked me. The … the little … imp!’

  Marlowe could not help laughing. ‘An odd choice of word, you’ll excuse me for saying,’ he said.

  ‘It’s what the Queen calls him. Her imp. Her little man, her pygmy. And worse.’

  ‘He is rather small,’ Marlowe said. It was only the truth, after all.

  ‘Small enough to poke and pry, to make trouble.’ Faunt heaved a heavy sigh and clapped Marlowe on the shoulder. ‘Well, Kit, we will prosper or fall under the imp whether we worry at it or not, I don’t doubt. Did you manage to find out anything … else?’

  Even with only Master Sackerson for company, Faunt was all circumspection.

  ‘The doctor is working on it for me.’ Marlowe took his cue from Faunt and spoke in riddles. ‘His dark friends are helping and we should soon have word.’

  ‘Words for my ears only,’ Faunt reminded him. ‘Not for the imp.’

  ‘Of course,’ Marlowe assured him. ‘When I know, you will know. But no one else.’

  ‘Hmm.’ Faunt shoved himself upright from the wall and straightened his hat. ‘Can I find you here? Is a play in the wind? I have noticed the bills. Something about a Jew? What did the Master of the Revels think of that?’

  ‘What he always thinks,’ laughed Marlowe. ‘That we should in fact be putting on solemn readings of the Scriptures. But Henslowe’s money works for Jews as well as for Scythian shepherds and so – the play must go on.’

  ‘I may find time to come and see what you have made of the subject.’ Faunt tried to sound as though he didn’t care, but he had never missed one of Marlowe’s plays since the very first, since the Queen of Carthage had been resurrected in darkest England. He somehow felt he needed to keep an eye on the playwright; deep inside he wondered whether he might one day see himself portrayed up there in the wooden O. The Tragedy of Nicholas Faunt – he could see it now.

  ‘You are always welcome, Nicholas, you know that,’ Marlowe broke into the man’s daydream. ‘There will be a ticket at the door, as there always is.’

  ‘Kind,’ Faunt murmured. ‘Very kind. Well, I must be away. Mistress Faunt is expecting me this afternoon. We are to go on the river, or so I believe.’

  ‘What for?’ Marlowe was puzzled. He had never heard Faunt willingly mention his wife; as for doing her bidding – this was not the Nicholas Faunt he knew.

  ‘For leisure, as I understand it.’ Faunt looked as though he did anything but. ‘In spring, or so I am told, the Thames can be very lovely.’ He grabbed a handful of Marlowe’s sleeve and pulled him close. ‘Kit. We must find something to do. Not only do I want justice for Sir Francis, but …’ He seemed lost for words and the disconcerting purple colour was creeping back into his cheek.

  Marlowe removed his hand from where it was crushing the velvet. ‘I understand,’ he said, kindly. ‘A man can only bear so much leisure.’

  Faunt was feeling better. He waved an airy farewell to Marlowe and Master Sackerson and wandered off down Maiden Lane. Perhaps if he were to be late, Mistress Faunt would take to the river without him.

  In the shadow of the Rose, two men turned as Marlowe and Faunt said their goodbyes and scurried into the dark of the flats, stored against the wall.

  ‘Could you see anything?’ the taller, broader one said.

  ‘Nothing,’ the shorter weaselly one replied. ‘They’re experts, them two. They talk without moving their lips. Like this.’ He mumbled a word or two, lips clamped together like a Thames mussel.

  ‘What?’ His companion was in no mood for levity.

  ‘Exactly.’ The shorter man smiled, showing blackened teeth. ‘Exactlerly.’ He carefully enunciated every syllable. ‘You need to move your mouth to be heard clear. And they don’t.’

  ‘You must have had a clue about some of it.’

  ‘Well …’ the failed lip reader looked up for inspiration, but just saw the grimy backs of old flats. ‘One of them … Faunt, isn’t his name? Yes, well, he said something about imps. You can see that, it’s hard to do a pee with your lips shut. See.’ He demonstrated, smacking his lips to show his point.

  ‘Ah. Imps. That would be the Devil, then. We can make something of that.’ The taller man was interested; they might well have something here. ‘Anything else?’

  ‘Jews. I know he said something about the Jews. And the river.’ He waited for his friend to speak. He always knew the answer, even when he wasn’t sure of the question.

  ‘So … Let me see. It seems to me,’ he was still thinking. ‘It seems to me that they are planning to raise an imp to throw some Jews into the river.’

  His companion was dubious. ‘Really? I don’t think Master Marlowe and Master Faunt would …’

  ‘Look.’ The taller man bent down and poked the other man in the chest with a grimy finger. ‘Don’t come the star-struck stuff with me. Just because Marlowe is a playwright …’

  ‘… and poet. Don’t forget poet.’

  ‘Yes, and poet. Just because he is that, don’t think he isn’t above drowning some Jews in the river. Remember Bamburgh?’

  ‘Do I ever!’

  ‘Could always be the blood libel. Or …’

  The small weaselly man leaned forward, his nose almost twitching with anticipation.

  ‘Or …’ he slapped his thigh with the realization. ‘Or, it’s a code.’

  ‘A code! Of course it is.’ His low brow furrowed. ‘So we’re none the wiser.’

  ‘Not really.’ The sigh was heartfelt. ‘But you got some practice in and that’s never a bad thing.’

  They crept out from under the concealing flats.

  ‘I forgot to ask. Have you got any lines in this here play?’

  Skeres smiled modestly. ‘One.’

  ‘Have you?’ Frizer said, impressed. ‘What?’

  ‘I’m a extra knight in Act Two. I have to say “Prithee”.’

  Frizer waited. ‘Is that it?’

  ‘Well,’ his friend was annoyed. ‘Sometimes I says it twice. But I give it a lot of feeling, even when I only says it once.’

  ‘You’re not getting a bit stage-struck, are you, Nick?’

  ‘Me?’ Skeres was outraged. ‘Never.’

  ‘As long as you’re not. We’ve got a job of work to do here, remember. A certain gentleman we know would not be too pleased if he thought we weren’t getting on with the job, now would he?’

  ‘I’ll remember, I’ll remember.’ There was a pause. ‘My old mother’s coming to see me, first night. I got her a seat and everything.’

  But Frizer had gone.

  SEVEN

  It was nothing he hadn’t experienced before. Years ago, when he scurried as a pot boy at the Star in Canterbury, when he rolled back to Corpus Christi with his lads of the Secundus Convictus under a drunken moon, he hadn’t known it. Now he did; the footsteps at his back, the shadow on the wall, the whisper on the stair. He could place exactly when all that started – it started the day that Francis Walsingham had found him on the road from Cambridge and Kit Marlowe had never been quite alone ever since.

  Now, under the Hog Lane stars, the tenter-grounds white and the windmills groaning, he heard it again, the soft pad of feet, the quiet hiss of breath. The footstep was just a thought behind his own, the breath just a touch more laboured; most men would have missed them in the hum the world makes as it spins, but not Kit Marlowe. He quickened his pace. It was yards yet to his front door, more if he doubled back through the Bedlam gate. But Bedlam was not the way to go; Marlowe had to keep his wits about h
im tonight. Tonight of all nights. The world, after all, had turned upside down. The Papists said that Francis Walsingham rotted in Hell, the Protestant Hell where all the Antichrists lay – Luther, the madman of Wittenberg; Zwingli, the people’s priest; Calvin, the lunatic of Geneva – the Devil had them all. And without Francis Walsingham, as the world was now? What then? What now?

  Whoever was following Marlowe was keeping his distance. This was no drunken roisterer, groping his way blindly towards Shoreditch. Nor was it an honest tapster making his way home. Marlowe stopped, stooping briefly to tie his boot, and risked a quick glance to his left. His shadow was tall, well set up and he had stopped too, trying to flatten himself into the timbers of the houses that led to Pietro’s garden. The oak was too solid and the doorway too shallow: he stood out like a sore thumb.

  Marlowe walked on, striding out again, making for the north. He had seen this ruse before, one used by the coney-catchers all over the city. One behind, one ahead, like the jaws of a coney trap, slamming suddenly on the neck of their hapless prey. But there was no one ahead. The stars were bright and the moon on the wane and Hog Lane was deserted as far as the eye could see.

  He walked beyond his front door and heard his follower’s footsteps falter. What was this? Did the man know where he lived and had Marlowe’s way tonight confused him? The footsteps picked up pace again and, when they appeared to be closing, Marlowe spun suddenly to face him, the dagger gleaming in his hand.

  ‘Ho, sirrah!’ he shouted. ‘Are you lost?’

  ‘It’s me, Master Marlowe,’ his shadow said, stopping in his tracks. ‘Carter, Dr Dee’s man.’

  Marlowe’s eyes narrowed, but the blade tip stayed steady, aimed at the man’s throat. ‘Carter,’ he nodded, recognizing him. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘If I may approach?’ Carter asked. He knew about Kit Marlowe, the suddenness of his temper, the speed of his knife.

  Marlowe spread his right arm wide but showed no sign of sheathing his weapon. ‘Approach away,’ he said.

  Carter moved slowly, unsure of the man he sought.

  ‘Did the doctor send you?’ Marlowe asked.

  ‘No, sir, the lady Jane. Mistress Dee would like a word. In private.’

  It was late. And the windows of the little house along the Cheap glowed with the candles of insomnia. Not for nothing had John Dee chosen Elias Carter for his factotum. The man was as close as a coffin and all the long walk through London’s tangle of streets, he had told Marlowe precisely nothing. It would be to break a confidence, he said. And that, he would rather die than do. Mistress Dee was in London, that was all he would say, at a little house the magus used from time to time. And she was worried. Worried enough to send for Kit Marlowe.

  Jane Dee looked lovelier by candlelight than in the sun. The flames danced in her eyes and shone on her long, chestnut hair. She was fully dressed and thanked Carter for his trouble before he melted into the darkness of the stair.

  ‘Thank you for coming, Master Marlowe,’ she said, offering him a chair. ‘It is a Godless hour and you will think me forward.’

  ‘One hour is much like another to me, lady,’ he said, ‘and why would I think that of the wife of the Queen’s magus?’

  ‘You must call me Jane,’ she insisted softly, sitting in front of him and staring into his face, ‘if you are to help me, as I hope you will.’

  He smiled. ‘Then you must call me Kit,’ he said.

  She laughed, a light, musical sound like water over pebbles and the ice of the early morning was broken. Since Madimi had been born, mouth open ready to yell, hands reaching for attention, she, like Marlowe, had been no respecter of hours. She had no air of sleep about her, rather the spark and glitter of a midday sun on leaves. She was still but, nonetheless, the air about her was not. Her laugh died and her face became serious. ‘You knew the first Mistress Dee,’ she said. ‘Helene.’

  Marlowe sat up slightly straighter, pulling infinitesimally away from this electric woman. Had she dragged him through the night streets to ask about a dead woman who had aroused her jealousy? ‘I did.’ His voice was cold.

  Jane Dee smiled. She had expected this reaction so she carried on. He would understand soon enough. ‘And you know, then, how broken John was by her death.’

  ‘He was,’ Marlowe remembered. ‘I promised him I would make her live again.’

  Her eyes widened. ‘Live again?’ she repeated. ‘I had no idea you were a magus, too.’

  It was Marlowe’s turn to smile. ‘I’m not. Unless you count words magic. I intended – perhaps still intend – to write her for the stage, in one of my plays.’

  ‘John would like that,’ she said.

  ‘Forgive me, Jane,’ Marlowe asked with a frown. ‘I don’t see …’

  She raised a hand. ‘Clearly, I didn’t know John then,’ she said, ‘but he has told me how close he came to … well, ending his own life. A blackness creeps over him at times, I know. And never more than now.’

  ‘And this has to do with Helene?’ he asked her.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she shrugged. ‘No, it can’t. But … the death of Walsingham. He wrote it in his journal – “The eleventh hour” several times. He has been staring into the scrying stone recently; not idly, as he usually does, as you or I might glance at the page of a book. No, he has been pacing his study at night, sitting hunched over the stone, seeing who knows what in its demon depths. He sees the future, Kit – you know that.’

  Marlowe nodded.

  ‘Octogesimus octavus – he forewarned of it.’

  ‘The year of the Armada, yes. But it turned out well.’

  ‘It might have done,’ Jane nodded, ‘but Philip still sits on his throne and how many more galleons will he send against us? You know Rodrigo Lopez?’

  ‘Dr Lopez? The Queen’s physician? Not personally, no, but … I have heard the name, of course.’ Marlowe could recite forwards, backwards and in cipher the entire complement of Her Majesty’s household, but there was no need to tell Jane Dee that. ‘I believe the late Sir Francis Walsingham consulted him from time to time.’

  ‘John fears him, Kit. “Beware the wolf,” the stone told him. The man is a magus of a different kind. He knows the poisons of the hedgerows.’

  ‘Does he, now?’

  ‘The pestilence will come, John says; here, to London. On a scale we have never seen before. There will be crosses on the doors and the graveyards won’t be deep enough to hold the dead. They will rise, shrieking, from the ground.’

  The playwright in Kit Marlowe listened with envy. This woman should be writing for the stage – no; if it were allowed, she should be on the stage. He could almost feel skeletal hands claw his throat. If Philip Henslowe found out about her, she’d never be able to call her soul her own.

  ‘And, Kit.’ She grabbed both his hands in hers. ‘Promise me you’ll stay away from Deptford.’

  ‘Deptford?’ he chuckled. ‘Wouldn’t be seen dead there.’

  ‘Don’t mock me, Kit, please,’ she said solemnly. ‘Don’t mock John.’

  ‘Was Deptford in the scrying stone?’ Marlowe asked.

  ‘That and much more,’ she told him. ‘And all this, all John’s dark moods, started as soon as you came to him with that damned cup.’

  ‘The poisoned chalice,’ Marlowe said. ‘I see. If you feel I am to blame, Jane, then I am sorry. But, what can be done?’

  ‘Talk to him, Kit, please. He trusts you, loves you as a true friend. He won’t talk to me.’

  ‘Is he at home?’ Marlowe asked. ‘Winchester?’

  ‘He is to wait on Her Majesty at Placentia in two days. He has lodgings there.’

  She was still holding his hands and he shifted so he was holding hers.

  ‘I’ve never been to Placentia,’ he said. He was about to say more, but checked himself. After all, Placentia was just along the river from Deptford.

  ‘Is it safe?’ He heard her voice in the darkness.

  ‘Is the world flat?’ he chuckled and pu
lled her to him, untying the thongs of her farthingale.

  ‘Walter,’ she scolded him. ‘Be serious.’

  He looked at her wistfully, her silhouette outlined against the window that overlooked the river. The dawn light gave a dull gleam to the white of his eye, to his teeth bared in his wicked grin. He wrapped a loving arm around her shoulders and turned her to the glass. ‘What do you see?’ he asked her.

  ‘The river,’ she said, ‘in the early morning.’

  ‘Ah, but what a river.’ He stood behind her, enveloping her in his powerful arms. ‘That way,’ he pointed with his right hand, ‘the Queen’s palace of Whitehall and, far beyond it, Hampton Court. That way,’ he pointed with his left, ‘the Black Deeps and the open sea and the Queen’s palace of Placentia.’

  ‘Must she always be with us?’ she asked him, her voice quiet and tired. ‘Even here?’

  He chuckled again and nuzzled her ear, breathing in her fragrance. ‘Durham House is mine because the Queen gave it to me, Bess. I have my knighthood because she tapped my shoulder with her rapier blade. I named Virginia in her honour and I am forbidden to leave these shores again by her command. It’s the way of it.’

  She turned to him, looking into his dark eyes. ‘What about me?’

  He laughed, not at her, but at the thought that she could even ask it. ‘What about you?’ he asked. ‘You are the love of my life, Bess Throckmorton, but you are bound to Gloriana more tightly even than I am. Good God, woman, you hold her candle as she gets into bed, unwrap her unmentionables. Have you any idea how many men would give their right arm to see what you see every night?’

  Bess pulled a disgusted face. ‘That was rather a long time ago, Walter, dear,’ she said. ‘And you may be sure that I never looked too closely, even then.’

  ‘Aha,’ he laughed, ‘the Virgin Queen keeps many a mystery under her farthingale.’

  ‘Virgin Queen!’ she snorted. ‘She’s no more a virgin than I am!’

  ‘Precisely,’ he said. ‘And, talking of which …’ He pulled her closer and they kissed in the window of Durham House, the Queen’s house that looked out over the Queen’s river. She checked him. ‘What if she ever finds out?’ she asked. It was a question which had haunted her for weeks now, ever since she had first melted into his arms.