Eleventh Hour

by M. J. Trow

  Marlowe smiled. ‘Good old Nicholas,’ he said. ‘He always comes and usually denies it.’

  ‘He was sitting with some little cove, I don’t know who he is. Needed a cushion, or so I was told.’

  ‘A cushion? The Rose has cushions?’

  ‘A guinea,’ Sledd said with a smile. ‘I didn’t know we had them either and I certainly didn’t know how much they cost. But Master Henslowe had it on his list and so … there you are. The gent paid up, as good as gold.’

  ‘Henslowe doesn’t miss a trick,’ Marlowe agreed. ‘He was pleased, was he, with the house?’

  ‘I heard him singing,’ Sledd remarked.

  ‘Oh. That pleased. I’ve only heard him do that once before.’

  ‘Twice,’ Sledd corrected him. ‘Once when he counted up the total for Tamburlaine, do you remember? We did an extra day on the run and everyone went mad for it. Performances almost round the clock. Alleyn couldn’t speak at the end, had to more or less mime that final act.’

  ‘And the other time?’ Marlowe had to know.

  ‘When Mistress H went to stay with her mother. She was gone three months.’

  ‘I do remember that,’ Marlowe said, thinking back. ‘I don’t remember the singing, but I do remember the bonus he gave everyone.’

  ‘And took back in the next pay,’ Sledd said. ‘But the thought was there.’ He looked sideways at Marlowe. ‘Do you mind if I ask you a question?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘That wasn’t the question.’ Tom Sledd had known Marlowe a long time.

  ‘Fair enough. I don’t mind if you ask me another question. I just don’t promise that I will answer it.’

  ‘Who is that?’

  Marlowe looked around. ‘That what?’

  ‘That man at the bottom of the lane. I’ve seen him around and now he seems to be leading your horse.’

  Marlowe stood up straight and peered into the growing dusk, to where he could just make out Carter, silhouetted against the beams of a lantern shining out of the windows of the inn on the opposite side of the road.

  ‘Ah. That would be Carter,’ he hedged.

  Sledd looked closer. ‘I don’t see a cart.’

  ‘No, not a Carter. Just Carter. He’s … he’s my manservant.’

  Sledd almost fell into the pit. ‘Manservant! Hold on, Kit. We don’t know if this play is going to go that well – not yet, anyway.’

  Marlowe scratched his head and looked a little shamefaced. It was easier to be labelled a spendthrift than a spy. ‘Well … I fancied spoiling myself a little.’

  ‘But you hated having a manservant before. What was his name? Windmill, was it?’

  ‘Windlass,’ Marlowe corrected him. ‘Jack Windlass. And he wasn’t a manservant, not really.’

  ‘You’re right there,’ Sledd agreed. ‘I never saw your linen so creased. But … even so, Kit. A manservant.’

  ‘I’m just trying him out,’ Marlowe said, to bring the conversation to a close. ‘He’s on one month’s approval.’

  ‘I wager you won’t keep him,’ Sledd said, smugly.

  ‘I won’t take you up on that, Tom,’ Marlowe said, flinging his cloak over his shoulder and finishing up his wine. ‘But I have to go. Tell everyone well done. Except … what was wrong with that knight in Act Two? He looked like something poleaxed. Either get him acting lessons or replace him, would you?’

  TWELVE

  Carter was trying to look inconspicuous, to give him credit where it was due, but sitting on one horse and leading another, it was tricky to say the least. Marlowe decided to give him the benefit of the doubt, however, and simply mounted his bay.

  ‘Are we going anywhere in particular, Carter?’ he asked him. He should be carousing with the cast, but this was hardly his first ‘first performance’ and there would always be another, after all.

  ‘The doctor has been in touch, Master Marlowe,’ Carter said. ‘He has spoken to … two gentlemen … and they would be pleased to meet with you tonight.’

  ‘As pleased as Ralegh?’ Marlowe could bear a grudge as well as the next man.

  ‘I did apologize for that,’ Carter said, a little testily. ‘I had been led to believe …’

  Marlowe flapped a hand at him. ‘Yes, yes, we’ll take that as read, shall we? But if it is two gentlemen this time, I need to know they are expecting me. One disgruntled scientist was bad enough; two might be the death of me.’

  ‘I have seen the note, Master Marlowe,’ Carter said, somewhat on his dignity. ‘I have it here if you want to look at it.’ He reached into his saddlebag and rummaged.

  ‘No, Carter, I believe you. But, surely you can see I am a little chary of just marching in to someone’s garden again. It wasn’t a pretty sight last time, I can tell you. In fact, when you next see me the wrong side of a glass or two, ask me for a private fact about Walter Ralegh; for now, I will just say his reputation with the ladies is not necessarily well-earned.’

  Carter looked intrigued, but there was a job to do; scurrilous details about the size of Walter Ralegh’s personal equipment could wait until another day. ‘I believe the gentlemen in question are in one case happily married and in the other, not much of a one for the ladies. I think you will be able to enter their presence with impunity.’

  Marlowe was unconvinced, but as he always expected the unexpected, nothing much had changed; he would go in with his hand on his dagger hilt and the eyes in the back of his head well and truly open. ‘You are being very circumspect, Carter. Are we going somewhere near or somewhere far?’

  ‘We need to follow the river west for quite a way,’ Carter said. ‘We could hire a waterman, but I thought you might prefer to ride and of course the journey is shorter – there are some meanders we can cut out. It is a fine night and the gentlemen are not expecting us early.’

  ‘Riding will suit me very well,’ Marlowe said. He needed to clear his head of the smell of the crowd. ‘Where are we going, exactly?’

  ‘We are heading to Syon House.’

  Marlowe thought for a moment. ‘Not Henry Percy again, surely? I heard he is renting the place, though why he needs yet more great houses it is hard to imagine,’ he said. ‘I somehow suspect I have blotted my copybook with him.’

  Carter chuckled. ‘You are well schooled in who owns what, Master Marlowe,’ he said. ‘I expect that goes with your employment.’

  ‘Employment?’ Marlowe was startled. Just what had Dee told his man?

  ‘As playwright, sir, as poet.’ Carter could not be disconcerted. ‘A man needs to know where the patrons are to be found, after all. But, no, it is not His Grace. Nor his brother. Sir Thomas Hariot has a suite of rooms there and he is one of the gentlemen we go to see tonight.’

  Marlowe racked his brain; he couldn’t remember whether they had met or if he had heard anything about the man. Somehow potatoes crossed his mind, but, surely, a man could not justly be judged because he looked like a potato, if that was indeed the link. ‘And the other?’

  ‘Now, this gentleman I know you know. Ferdinando Stanley, Lord Strange.’

  ‘I have met Lord Strange on many occasions,’ Marlowe conceded. What theatrical man had not? ‘Is he keeping well, these days?’

  Carter shrugged. ‘I did not enquire as to His Lordship’s health, I confess,’ he said. ‘Why? Has he been unwell?’

  ‘He thinks so,’ Marlowe chuckled. ‘He is very … how can I put it … he watches the skies more often than the earth, he thinks more about the poison that could be in his food than the taste of it. Every black cat that crosses his path is an omen and it often proves his worth; any man who watches the skies so much is bound to fall over a black cat in the dark every once in a while.’

  ‘Ah. I understand. In that case, I believe he is well.’

  ‘Good.’ Marlowe liked Strange. He took a little getting used to, if only because the mole on his forehead sometimes seemed to be looking at a person more intently than his eyes were, but once over that hurdle, he was diverting company a
nd as sharp as a tack. Keeping him off talking theatre shop was the main thing; some of his Men had played at the Rose and rumour had it that he was trying to poach Richard Burbage. Only Burbage and Strange thought that Henslowe would mind.

  The men rode in silence along the darkening lanes and now and then were alongside the Thames. Sometimes they were riding on the banks, the water gliding slick and fast almost at their feet. Other times they were out of sight of it but could still hear the slap of the water against piers and jetties. But most of the time it was a distant rumour to their left, the smell of the foreshore and the cry of the occasional water-bird late home to its nest the only clue that the country’s greatest waterway was just a stone’s throw away. Before too long, the small town of Braynford was ahead, lights in some windows showing where weavers and spinners sat up late to complete their tasks. A bakery’s chimney belched smoke and from an alehouse came the sound of raucous laughter.

  Marlowe enjoyed being out at night. The darkness and the steady plod of the horses’ hoofs lulled him and his mind could wander where it would. Carter was a good companion; schooled by Dee, he did not chatter or gossip but simply kept pace, half a horse’s length behind and to the side of the road, from where danger might come.

  Usually after a first performance, the playwright’s mind would be full of what could be done to improve it. There would always be something that would need to be cut, embellished, recast. But tonight, as for many days and nights before, his head was spinning with the possibilities of the story of Faustus, the magus who conjured the devil. Let Tom Sledd worry about the how – Marlowe was the man to tell the story so that no one who saw it would sleep again. He would raise the hackles. He would chill the blood. For if not him, then who?

  Carter watched his new master’s back as he rode. Over the years, he had found that a man’s soul rode on his back. If he were vulnerable, uncertain, vicious, unpredictable, all of that was in the set of his shoulders, the angle of his head. In Marlowe he saw everything, in much the same way as, it was said, the world was in a grain of sand. Where the hair curled on his neck, there was the choirboy. His back, straight and strong, was that of a man who would brook no argument. The curl of the ear, the flash of the eye, as the head turned constantly this way and that, bespoke of the poet and playwright, the man for whom every sound and sight was grist to his mill. And the right hand, curled loosely on the saddle at the small of his back, a heartbeat away from the dagger’s hilt, told of a man whose guard was never down, who never rested. He couldn’t see the lover, but all men were allowed some secrets.

  Marlowe’s horse kicked a stone and something unknown skittered through the hedgerow and the spell was broken.

  ‘Not long now, Master Marlowe,’ Carter said and on they rode.

  Ned Alleyn had already gone, whisked into the Southwark night by his favourite Winchester goose, whose friend tagged along as a spare. The night had been merry, the players of The Jew still hearing the groundlings’ applause rattling in their ears and the ale at the Mermaid flowed like water. The first round, unusually, had been on Henslowe; after that, it was every tippler for himself.

  ‘He’s got a new one, Will.’ Tom Sledd was slurring a little by now; the brew had made him expansive but, at the same time, confidential.

  ‘Who? What?’ Shaxsper prided himself on being a moderately intelligent man, but riddles were for University Wits and he wasn’t one of those.

  ‘Kit. Kit’s got a new play.’

  Shaxsper grabbed the stage manager’s sleeve. ‘Tell me it’s not Henry the Sixth.’

  ‘Who?’ Sledd frowned, trying to focus. ‘Oh, God, no … um, I mean, no. I can’t say too much of course, but …’ he checked the revellers to left and right, ‘… there’s been nothing like it before on the English stage, believe me.’

  ‘That good?’ Shaxsper was unconsciously grinding his teeth. One day, he knew, his day would come. But not yet; not as long as Marlowe was the Muses’ darling and the London riff-raff flocked to see him.

  ‘Better,’ Sledd confided, nodding at his tankard in a complacent way for far longer than the riposte warranted, in that way drunk stage managers have.

  There was a roar of laughter as Nick Skeres slid off his stool and lay on the tavern floor, helpless with ale and mirth.

  ‘Pity he didn’t do that on stage,’ Sledd grunted.

  ‘What’s it about?’ Shaxsper asked.

  ‘What?’ It was Sledd’s turn to be obtuse.

  ‘Marlowe’s new play.’ Shaxsper might not be a successful playwright yet, but he could follow a plot.

  ‘Tom Sledd!’ A harpy shriek shattered a moment already loud with merriment.

  ‘Oh, God …’ Sledd moaned before a very large woman hauled him off his stool and hugged him with a grip Master Sackerson would have envied.

  ‘Look at you,’ she held him at arm’s length momentarily, before burying him again in her pillowing bosom. Flinging him away from her once more so she could get a really good look at him, she cried, ‘You’re so … growed up!’

  ‘Yes.’ He grinned sheepishly.

  ‘Not still playing the maid, I’ll wager.’ She nudged him with an elbow that could have broken a less nimble man’s ribs. Before he could answer, she reached down and patted his codpiece. ‘No, not with a block and tackle like that. Still in the theatre, though, eh?’

  ‘Yes.’ Sledd did his best to extricate himself. ‘Yes, still at the … Curtain. Look, Maggie!’ He gripped her sleeve and pointed into the jostling crowd. ‘Isn’t that Richard Burbage over there?’

  She screamed and threw her arms wide. ‘Dick Burbage!’ she roared and crashed through the throng.

  ‘What was that?’ an alarmed Shaxsper asked as Sledd straightened his doublet and sat back down.

  ‘Maggie Tupper.’ Sledd took refuge in his ale cup. ‘She likes actors.’

  ‘Hasn’t seen you for a while, I gather, if she remembers you playing the girlies.’

  ‘Last Thursday,’ Sledd said, keeping his head down as Richard Burbage was valiantly trying to defend himself in the far corner. ‘We have exactly the same conversation most weeks. Mad as a tree, that one. She’ll be looking for spots in the palm of her hand next. Where were we?’ He tried to focus.

  ‘Marlowe’s new play.’

  ‘Ah, yes, well …’

  But Shaxsper was to learn no more. Not tonight. The doors crashed back, all three of them simultaneously and armed men broke through the crowd, shoving people aside, slapping one or two around the head with the flat of their halberds and forming a ring in the centre of the room.

  ‘Now, look here …’ the Mermaid’s host emerged from behind his counter, a spiked cudgel cradled in his arms.

  ‘You.’ A captain in the Queen’s livery snapped at him, clicking his fingers. ‘Owen, isn’t it? You keep this stews?’

  The landlord straightened. ‘I am Andrew Owen,’ he said, ‘and I own the Mermaid. What of it?’

  The captain turned to face the man. Everyone had fallen silent now and Richard Burbage took the opportunity to extricate himself from mad Maggie. His attempt to leave was less successful, however, because two very large men blocked the nearest door. ‘You keep a bawdy house …’ the captain said.

  ‘The Hell I do,’ Owen spat back. ‘I—’

  ‘A bawdy house full of Papists.’

  ‘Now you’ve gone too far,’ Owen growled, but his half-step forward ended in him toppling over, overturning a table as he went down, pole-axed.

  The captain kicked the still-recumbent Skeres. ‘Take him,’ he muttered and the hapless gentleman, scarcely walking at all, was lifted bodily and carried towards the door.

  ‘Just a minute …’ Ingram Frizer slammed down his tankard and squared up to the captain. He barely reached his ruff.

  ‘Him too,’ the captain murmured and Frizer’s knife was whisked out of his belt and he was catapulted towards the door.

  ‘Search them,’ the captain bellowed and his men went to work. Doublets were ripped o
pen, purses emptied. There were shouts from the men and screams from the women, all except Maggie, who was smiling benignly as a guard carried out his captain’s orders with a zealousness that he hoped would lead to promotion.

  ‘Do you mind!’ Shaxsper was on his feet, butting aside a guard’s probing fingers.

  ‘You!’ the captain snapped. ‘Where are you from?’

  ‘Blackfriars,’ Shaxsper told him.

  It was the actor-playwright’s turn to feel the intensity of the captain’s gaze. ‘If I’d wanted a comedian, I’d have sent for Will Kemp. Where are you from originally?’

  ‘Warwickshire.’ Shaxsper stood half a head taller.

  ‘Warwickshire?’ the captain said with a slow grin. ‘Hear that, lads? Warwickshire. There are more Papists in that Godforsaken county than there are hairs on my head. Take him.’

  ‘You can’t do that!’ Tom Sledd had sobered up, as men will when their lives are on the edge.

  The captain grinned again. ‘See that?’ he pointed to the Tudor rose embroidered on his doublet. ‘That says I can. Now,’ he frowned, ‘you’re no Warwickshire Pope-lover, not by your accent anyway.’

  ‘That’s right,’ Sledd said. ‘I’m local, me. London through and through.’ He too looked at the captain’s ruff. ‘What are you going to do about it?’

  The captain just nodded and somebody else did something about it. There was a thud and – for Tom Sledd – the world went black.

  The great Italianate front of Syon House rose above the trees as the horsemen turned into the sweeping drive through the park. The Queen probably didn’t even know she owned this gorgeous building; surely, if she did, she would live here and not Placentia, with all its inconveniences, draughts and ghosts. The river was unpolluted by the hordes of London, the park was full of grazing cattle, sheep and deer, all now sheltering under the spreading trees scattered across the well-cropped grass. In short, it was a little Paradise. As they came nearer to the house, a shape detached itself from a tree. The man stepped forward, his hat pulled low, his cloak swept over one shoulder.

  ‘Hold hard, gentlemen!’ The voice was harsh, its age and accent impossible to even guess. ‘What is your business?’