The Armor of Light

by Melissa Scott

  There was an answering shout from the back of the house, too distant for him to make out the words. “Wake me at noon!” he shouted, and started up the narrow stairs without waiting for her indignant answer. Nathanial followed at his heels, balancing himself with one hand flattened against the rough plaster wall. Marlowe paused at the top of the stairs for him, stretching, and felt the muscles of his shoulder crack painfully. It had been much too long a night.

  “My room’s in the front,” he said, pushing away the memory of the looming demon, and beckoned for the boy to follow. The door was unlocked, as always, and swung open to his touch. “You can—” His voice died as he realized what was waiting for him.

  A man was sitting in the room’s only chair, a trim, unobtrusive man, very neat in a suit of oxblood wool trimmed with gilt, his sandy beard just touching the edge of his discreet ruff. “Good morning, Kit,” he said, and smiled cherubically. “Your charming landlady let me wait.”

  Marlowe froze. The honeyed voice brought back a memory he’d worked hard to forget, Mistress Bull’s tavern and the scattered dishes, the musty curtains and Frizer’s weight against him, the bearded face grinning at him, while the hands tightened inexorably on his throat, and Poley drawled at his partner to finish it, in God’s name …

  “I seem to have interrupted something,” Robin Poley continued, still smiling. “I do apologize.”

  The malice in his voice stung, driving back remembered terror. Marlowe took Nathanial’s shoulder, turning him back toward the door. His fingers brushed the boy’s cheek in passing, and he knew from Nathanial’s shiver and questioning glance that they were as cold as ice. “Go back downstairs to the kitchen,” he said, in a strange, dry voice he barely recognized as his own. “Tell Mary-Martha or Bess that you’re to be an apprentice, and you’ll be staying here a few days.” He gave the boy a gentle push, propelling him through the doorway. “Go on, now.” This was not the way he would have chosen to introduce Nathanial to his formidable landlady, but he had been given no choice in the matter. He tilted his head to one side, listening as Nathanial’s hesitating footsteps made their way down the stairs, but did not take his eyes from Poley.

  “Good God, Kit,” the sandy-haired man said. “You’re taking them young these days.”

  “What in hell’s name do you want?” Marlowe asked.

  “No hard feelings, surely,” Poley answered, with just enough arch surprise to add a sting to the words.

  Marlowe scowled, only too aware of his own fear. He could feel his hands shaking, and made himself cross the room to his writing table. The papers, the draft of one act of one of Munday’s plots, had been shifted. He fought back another surge of panic and anger—there was nothing there that could hurt him—and reached for his pipe. He filled it, deliberately turning his back on the other man, and fumbled with his tinderbox. “You were doing what you’re best at,” he said, around the stem of the pipe. “Following someone’s orders.”

  Poley’s mild expression froze for an instant, but then the moment passed. “Is that a way to greet me? And I’ve brought you good news, too.”

  “What’s that?” Marlowe asked, suspiciously. The tobacco had caught; he set the tinderbox aside, glancing at his hands. They were steady now, but the knot of fear refused to vanish from his chest.

  Poley lowered his voice discreetly. “Our—mutual employer is willing to overlook your having been so careless as to come to the Privy Council’s notice the year before last. In fact, he has a job for you.”

  “Oh?” Marlowe drew deeply on his pipe, pleased at having achieved the proper note of independence, as though he might actually refuse to do whatever Cecil had in mind. In bitter fact, of course, he didn’t dare—neither of his patrons was so powerfully placed as to be able to shield him from the secretary of state a second time—but it was impossible for him not to make the gesture. “I’m in the middle of a play, Poley—”

  “One act, which you have finished,” the other man interrupted. “No, no one’s watching you, Kit—would it be worth our while? But you hardly make a secret of your affairs.” He nodded toward the table with its litter of papers.

  Marlowe’s mouth tightened, but he managed to ignore both the jibe and the veiled threat. “Why don’t you tell me what you want?”

  Poley smiled, very sweetly. “Her majesty is sending your present patron to Scotland, to carry gifts to the young prince, who, we understand, is newly recovered from the smallpox. You will accompany him.”

  Marlowe raised an eyebrow. That might be the official explanation for a Scottish journey, but he was quite certain there was more involved than a matter of the prince’s illness. Elizabeth was notoriously unenthusiastic about her distant cousin’s heirs. But at least it had nothing to do with him, personally. Slowly, the poet began to relax a little, and enjoy the irony of the situation.

  “Actually—” Poley lowered his voice again, until Marlowe had to strain to hear him over the noise in the street below. “Actually, Sir Philip’s presence has been ordered by her majesty herself.” He lowered his voice still further, almost to a whisper. “It’s a matter of witchcraft.”

  “In which case,” Marlowe said, in his normal voice, “I should’ve thought you’d want to send Raleigh. Or Dr. Dee.” He took a malicious pleasure in the expression of fear that flickered across Poley’s face.

  “Dr. Dee is too old for such a journey, “ Poley answered, and added primly, “and her majesty doesn’t wish Sir Walter to be absent from court just now.”

  Or the Cecils don’t, Marlowe thought. I wonder what Raleigh’s done now—have they got wind of Northumberland’s latest tricks? The thought chilled him, and he pushed it away, saying, “And why am I supposed to accompany this embassy?”

  “Sir Robert wishes to be sure Sir Philip has someone with him on whom he can rely,” Poley said, his confidence returning. His smile vanished as abruptly as it had appeared. “And he wishes you, Kit, to keep him informed of events in Scotland.”

  “In other words,” Marlowe said, “you want me to spy on Sir Philip. I assume you’ve brought some warrant?”

  Poley nodded, and slipped a much-folded piece of paper out of the cuff of his glove. “Sir Philip has been too much inclined to act without consulting the secretary, lately,” he said.

  Which, translated, means he’s been thinking for himself, Marlowe thought. The corners of his mouth twitched upward briefly. One of those acts undertaken without the secretary’s approval—in fact, against Sir Robert’s expressed wishes—had been the saving of his own life. There was a certain rather theatrical irony in being ordered to spy on his rescuer for the very man who’d ordered his murder—and in having the message carried by one of the three would-be murderers. There was an even nastier irony in the assumption that he’d do it. Sighing, he unfolded the slip of paper Poley had given him, and scanned the familiar spiky handwriting. It was no more than a letter of credence, a curt order to treat Poley’s words as Sir Robert’s own, and Marlowe refolded it thoughtfully. It was a little unsettling that Cecil had seen fit to add nothing more, either threat or promise—as though Sir Robert’s hold was so complete that there was no need for either one. But of course there wasn’t, Marlowe thought, bitterly. Even after Deptford—perhaps because of Deptford —he didn’t really have any choice. Still, the idea of meek acquiescence choked him; he said instead, “Where’s Sir Philip staying these days, at Penshurst?”

  Foley nodded, a superior smile on his lips. “Yes. But Sir Robert wishes to see you first. Tonight, after evensong, at Paul’s.”

  “Does he,” Marlowe said, sourly. “All right, I’ll be there.”

  Foley’s smile widened. “Of course.” He gestured imperiously toward the cluttered table. “The letter, burn it.”

  Marlowe bit back an automatic refusal. After a moment’s search, he found an earthenware dish, then held the twisted letter to the smoldering tobacco until it caught, laying it in the dish as the flame grew. It burned quickly, shriveling into a fragile shell of a
sh; almost before it cooled, Marlowe crumbled it between his thumb and forefinger.

  “I’ll inform Sir Robert,” Poley said, briskly, and held out his hand. That was what Marlowe had been waiting for: as they joined hands, he managed to drag his sooty fingers across the other man’s clean, embroidered cuff. Poley jerked his hand free with a curse.

  “So clumsy of me,” Marlowe jeered.

  Poley gave him a murderous glance, but said only, “At Paul’s, for evensong, Marlowe. You’d best be there.”

  “I will be,” the poet said, but he was talking to the other man’s back. Poley stalked from the room, and slammed the door behind him.

  Left alone, Marlowe leaned back against the table, mechanically wiping the rest of the ash from his fingers with a scrap of rag. It had been a petty revenge, unsatisfying, ultimately unworthy of the situation. Almost in spite of himself, he began reworking the scene, reshaping it into something dramatically useful. The basic situation was good, filled with perverse ironies; he would keep that, but raise the stakes—perhaps the patron should be in danger himself, accused of witchcraft or of treason? The dialogue, too, would have to be rewritten... Experimentally, he murmured a line, and then another, the blank verse coming almost as easily as prose, the characters tossing the thread of the scene back and forth as if it were a child’s ball. Double meanings and a veiled insult capped with a classical tag, a not-so-veiled remark breaking suddenly into violence, a drawn dagger and a marked face... He stopped abruptly, the images vanishing. If the spy were the aggressor, it would spoil the vague plot taking place to hold the scene—there was no room in it for the inevitable, necessary retribution. It would work better if the Poley character were the attacker, but he couldn’t see how to get to that point.

  He shook himself, frowning, and put aside the now-dead pipe. There was no time for this sort of day-dreaming, already Mary-Martha was probably preparing his eviction, unless he could convince her that Nathanial was only a temporary visitor and no bedmate of his. In spite of his better judgment, his mouth curved into a reminiscent grin. She had raised enough objections when his Ganymede had come to stay, and he had been a man of nineteen. He pushed himself off the edge of the table, and started back down the stairs toward the kitchen.

  To his surprise, Mary-Martha was nowhere among the pots and crockery. Bess, the maid-of-all-work, glanced up from the great cauldron simmering on the hearth, and favored him with her cheerful, gap-toothed smile. “That was a kind thing you did, Master Kit.”

  Marlowe raised a sardonic eyebrow, but the young woman continued unheeding, “Poor lamb, he’s in the garden with the mistress.”

  “Thank you,” Marlowe said, and started for the garden door. Mary-Martha had only a small walled plot, but it was enough to keep her provided with at least some of her vegetables and herbs, and she was duly proud of it. Already, Marlowe saw, she had put the boy to work digging in one of the end beds; as he stepped onto the flagged path, she rose hastily to her feet, brushing the dirt and the winter’s dead leaves from her skirts.

  “No, Nate, you go on with that, I only have a few words to say to Master Marlowe.” Unobtrusively, she motioned for the poet to stay where he was, and came to join him, tucking a few loosened strands of hair back under her embroidered coif. “Well, Master Marlowe, it was a kindness to the boy, taking him away from there, but what am I to say if his old master comes looking?”

  “I trust it won’t come to that,” Marlowe temporized. “And I trust you’ll give me a better explanation.” The woman lifted an eyebrow at him.

  Marlowe sighed. It was beginning to be borne in on him that apprenticing the boy with the Admiral’s Men would not be as easy a solution as he’d hoped. “If anyone comes looking, tell them the truth. I brought the boy here, and you don’t know anything more than that.”

  Mary-Martha’s foot tapped impatiently on the flagstones; she stilled it instantly, frowning. “If you were my husband, Marlowe …”

  “God forbid,” Marlowe muttered, only half in jest, and the woman smiled. She had buried one husband already, owned her house and its land and a part-interest in her late husband’s business: she was in no need of something so unchancy as a poet for anything except a lodger.

  “And maybe not even for that,” she murmured, and shook herself. “He can sleep in the storeroom next to Bess’s room,” she said aloud. “Two shillings to house and feed him ’til the end of the month, and two more shillings for the bed and sheets—which I will launder. And sixpence to take care of his clothes.”

  Marlowe nodded, too tired to haggle. “Agreed.”

  “In advance,” Mary-Martha stipulated.

  Marlowe sighed. “I’ll give it to you this evening,” he said, and held up his hand to stop her automatic protest. “I have to meet some people this afternoon, Mary-Martha, and I had no sleep last night. Will you wake me at three?”

  “A filthy habit, sleeping out the day,” the woman said, but nodded. “I’ll wake you. Have the money for me this evening, mind.”

  “I will,” Marlowe said, and stepped back into the house before she could answer. Sighing again, he made his way back up the stairs to his room and, after a moment’s thought, bolted the door behind him. Mechanically, he began to undress, loosening the strings of his wilted ruff, then kicking off the long boots. He left them where they fell, taking care only with his doublet—his second-best, peach satin trimmed with flax-blue braid—and the paned slops. He laid them carefully on the clothes-chest, and stretched out on the bed still wearing hose and shirt. He closed his eyes, savoring the mattress’s comfort, then turned onto his side, drawing the blankets over himself still half-clad. In the dimness, the demon’s memory waited; he walled it out with the tricks he’d learned to cheat all bad memories, barring it from everything but the worst dreams, and, slowly, slept.

  Chapter Five

  You have heard of Mother Nottingham, who for her time was pretty well skilled in casting of waters, and after her, Mother Bomby; and then there is one Hatfield in Pepper Ally, he doth pretty well for a thing that’s lost.

  Thomas Heywood, The Wise-woman of Hogsdon

  The promised knock at the door roused him from a fitful dream. “I’m awake, Mary-Martha,” he called, and sat up against the pillows, trying to recapture the fading image. It was somehow important, he thought, something I need to know... But he could remember only standing in a London street and looking up between the houses, to see a great dark wing obscuring half the sky. He shivered, digging his hands into his thick, close-cut hair, and pushed the image away again. “What’s the time?”

  “Just past three.” It was Bess who answered, still standing at the door. “Are you awake, Master Marlowe? Unbolt the door, I’ve brought your hot water.”

  Groaning, Marlowe pushed himself out of bed, and padded across the warped floor to slip the bolt. Bess gave him an appraising glance, and a quick grin, and slipped past him to set her tray on the nearest cleared surface. The poet, who had forgotten until that moment that he had gone to bed in shirt and hose instead of the longer, concealing nightshirt, rubbed his chin and tried to appear unconcerned.

  “And I’ve brought your dinner,” Bess continued, “if you want it.’ Her smile widened. “Will there be anything else?”

  Marlowe shook his head. “How’s the boy settling in?”

  Bess’s grin vanished, and she said quite seriously, “Well enough, I think. Witches ought to be burned, if that’s what they do to people. The mistress has him helping in the garden still—she thinks he ought to be kept busy, and I think she’s right about it. And he’ll be next to me, if he has nightmares.”

  “Thank you, Bessy,” Marlowe said, and the woman nodded, accepting her dismissal. She paused in the doorway.

  “The mistress says, don’t forget you owe her five shillings.”

  “Four and sixpence,” Marlowe said, but Bess was gone. Sighing, he turned his attention to the tray she’d brought. A tankard of beer and a generous wedge of pie, besides the hot water… not a b
ad dinner, considering that Mary-Martha so disapproved of his habits. He took a long swallow of beer, then pushed back his sleeves to wash hands and face. His hands rasped against his stubbled cheeks, but after a moment’s hesitation he shook his head. He was still too tired to risk shaving himself, and there was no time to visit a barber—and in any case he’d been shaved the day before.

  The hot water revived him somewhat, and he dragged off shirt and hose before he could change his mind. He dressed quickly then, between bites of the pie, pulling on clean shirt and not too much mended hose, then the tawny slops and his everyday judas-color doublet, and finally fastening the long boots to the slops-leg. He finished the pie and washed his hands again before taking his smallest ruff, no deeper than a finger-joint and starched to expensive perfection, from the bandbox and tying it carefully around his neck. He reached for his mirror, lying buried in the litter of papers on the writing table, and stopped at the sudden memory. It took an effort of will to pick up the little glass and look into it; he gave a sigh of relief when no dark figure loomed behind him. Instead, there was just his own long, hollow-cheeked face, unshaven and still puffy-eyed, and the whitewashed wall for a background. He grimaced at the image—there was no time for vanity—and swept up his flat cap, adjusting it one-handed to just the proper rake. His reflection stared back at him, an emblem of dissipation; he frowned, and put the mirror away. At the door, he paused, and turned back to pick up his rapier on its worn belt, at the same time sliding his dagger onto his right hip. It was never wise to meet unarmed with princes: he stored the phrase for possible future use, and started down the stairs.

  The Admiral’s Men did most of their business at the Bell in Southwark behind Winchester House. Marlowe felt his purse for the tenth time since crossing the river, feeling for the rolled manuscript. Philip Henslowe, who financed the Admiral’s Men, liked to cut his costs by parceling out a single plot among three or four men, each one writing a single act, and his son-in-law Edward Alleyn, who was also the company’s leading man, raised no objection to the practice. The writers themselves would rather die than admit they liked the work, but it did mean an easy fee, and that was something to be coveted. If I hadn’t needed a few pounds, with Sir Philip on progress with the court, Marlowe conceded, I’d never have done it—but it was a good thing they needed plays.