Silent Court

by M. J. Trow

  Balthasar Gerard nudged him in the ribs and gestured with a greasy hand. ‘Don’t worry, Master Marlowe,’ he said. ‘It is chicken.’

  Marlowe looked at him in surprise. He had been eating heartily enough; surely the question in his head had not been written quite so clearly on his face?

  ‘Or, shall we say, mostly chicken.’ The man laughed. ‘Don’t mind me, Master Marlowe. I like to keep my hand in; like this stew, most of what I do is what you would expect. But you must learn when living with us to expect the unexpected.’

  ‘Where are we off to next?’ Marlowe asked. ‘I need to be out of the country sooner, rather than later.’

  ‘You can’t be in a hurry if you travel with Egyptians,’ Balthasar told him. ‘I have been with this crew of Hern’s for some years and have learned that they are strangers to the straight line. Watling Street is straight for many a mile but Hern won’t tread an inch of it; superstition, long bred in him, I fancy. The rolling English road is more his line; a strange choice for an Egyptian.’

  ‘Does any in this band come from Egypt?’ Marlowe asked. He had a fancy for writing a play on Cleopatra and Mark Antony and a little local colour never hurt in these undertakings. He always thought of himself as a playwright who did a bit of spying on the side, never the reverse.

  Balthasar Gerard laughed and clapped the scholar on the shoulder. ‘Bless the man,’ he said and turned his head to the others. ‘Which of you comes from Egypt, Master Marlowe wants to know.’

  There were shaken heads and offers of various countries, some far flung, but none it seemed hailed from anywhere near the Nile.

  ‘Once upon a time,’ Gerard told him, ‘I’m sure that a band came out of Egypt, bringing magic and colour to the more desolate areas of the world. Here and there there would be a dreamer, a poet, a singer of songs, a man such as you and he would tag on to the end of the caravanserai as it left town and so the bands grew, broke up, reformed, but were always called Egyptians, the children of the moon.’

  ‘And are they all soothsayers?’ Marlowe couldn’t help but be reminded of his old friend John Dee, who could raise the dead, at least to his own satisfaction.

  ‘No, by no means. Many use the cards or bones to pretend to tell the future. Not all have an adept such as myself.’ In the firelight, Balthasar’s eye teeth gleamed. ‘I am famous even with other bands. They leave messages on the road to meet with us, so I can tell them what to expect in the time ahead.’

  Secretly, Marlowe thought this would be quite an easy task; hunger, cold, dirt and, if they met the wrong kind of Constable, death.

  ‘I see that you have worked out our futures for yourself, Master Marlowe,’ Balthasar said, with his usual uncanny prescience. ‘But, as you can see –’ he waved his arm over the camp – ‘we are not hungry, not cold and, though we may be dirty, we have evaded the Constable who, I imagine, has gone ahead of us to the coast.’

  ‘How can you possibly know that?’ Marlowe said. ‘He could be on our tail as you speak.’

  ‘You are riding the horse he hired from the stables,’ Balthasar said. ‘That he couldn’t manage it is the talk of Cambridge. He left again on a quieter mount, but that was a while ago. Unless he is carrying his horse, which is unlikely, even for him, he is ahead of us. Unless he doubles back – and why should he? – he will ride until he reaches the coast. There he will wait a while, or he will ride back towards Cambridge. But since we will not be on that road, he will miss us again. And unless we are very unlucky, we will be long gone before he knows what has happened.’

  ‘Why won’t we be on that road?’ Marlowe asked. ‘Surely, we are heading straight to King’s Lynn. Don’t you want to be in Holland for the holiday fairs and such? Isn’t there money to be made there?’

  Balthasar gave Marlowe a long look. ‘Either you have been planning to join us for a long while, Master Marlowe, or someone has told you much about us Egyptians. I won’t ask why you want to leave the country, but I think it is more that you want to reach Holland than that you need to leave England.’ He laughed again and slapped Marlowe on the shoulder. It was beginning to get rather painful and the scholar wished he would stop doing it.

  ‘Not at all,’ he said, and even to his own ears it sounded unconvincing. ‘Had you been heading for France, or Spain, I would have still come with you.’

  Balthasar Gerard looked for a long while at Kit Marlowe without speaking. There was something about the man which he couldn’t read, couldn’t penetrate. Most people had two layers in his experience, the one they showed to the world and the one that lay beneath. The one Kit Marlowe showed to the world, the flash horse, the gaudy clothes and the money was not the real one, or even close to it. That he was a scholar was obvious from the callus on his finger from the quill and the softness of his hand. But then there was the rest. His speech had cadences in it that suggested a singer, yet when Balthasar had mentioned singers there had not even been a flicker of an eyelid. Whatever the man was hiding, he had built his walls thick and high. But Balthasar was good at what he did, and persistent. He would find out before they embarked at King’s Lynn what this man was all about.

  ‘As you say,’ he said, turning back to the group around the fire. ‘Is it time for tales, Hern?’ he asked. ‘If so, I fancy Master Marlowe has more than one to tell.’

  The troupe took up the cry and Marlowe shifted round until he was facing them squarely. ‘What kind of tale do you want?’ he asked.

  ‘Love,’ cried one of the women.

  ‘But sad,’ another said, ‘like life is.’

  ‘No,’ Frederico said. ‘Let’s have war and plenty of it.’

  ‘Can there be a cat in it?’ the little girl from his pommel said, snuggling in to his side. ‘A kitten, a ginger one with white paws?’

  Marlowe looked around the faces in the firelight and the spy dropped away, leaving the poet and playwright in full command. ‘I’ll tell you a tale,’ he said, ‘with all of those things. A tale of Dido, Queen of Carthage –’ he looked down at the grubby, earnest little face under his encircling arm – ‘and her cat.’

  Christopher Marlowe had been in some sticky situations, from the College proctors to the silent men in Walsingham’s employ, but he had always endured those situations in the comfort, if only relative, of rooms in Corpus Christi or a palatial home with the Shelleys. The Tower was an option that he knew was always on the table; Walsingham reminded him of it whenever he thought fit and he had heard enough of life in that cold, dank place to want to avoid it, although death in the Tower was probably worse than the life. But nothing had prepared him for a night spent with the Egyptians.

  As a paying guest, in a manner of speaking, he was given the back of a wagon to sleep in for privacy, rather than share a space in the tent, as some of the others did. He was given a couple of dogs to share his bed, for the warmth. He was offered a woman as well, for the same purpose or any other he cared to name, but he politely refused the latter and the former were soon looking for other lodgings when the scratching and the passing of wind got too much. He hadn’t the heart to eject the monkey, the parrot and the snake, as he had obviously usurped their usual bed.

  The parrot he could come to terms with, as it was as sleepy as he was and he could also foresee some amusement to be gained from teaching it some words that the Egyptians might not expect. The snake kept itself to itself, by and large, and once he had got used to the occasional dry rustle as it moved around in its basket, he didn’t mind it. At least it didn’t smell as much as the monkey. While the dogs were still in residence he had hardly noticed it, but once they were gone to seek new lodgings, he became aware of the smell of a piss-soaked carpet, warming in front of the fire. Every time the animal moved, a new waft reached Marlowe’s nostrils and he was soon wishing for the old aromas of his shared room with the Parker scholars, which had been known to make strong men weep, to improve the general atmosphere. But soon he stopped noticing even that, and slept deeply.

  In the morning, he fe
lt as though he had slept on a sack of stones and when he looked he found that in fact it had been brightly coloured balls, obviously for the use of the troupe when juggling. But although they were much more colourful than stones would be, the general effect was the same and he ached at every joint. It was still dark when the rough curtain at the back of the wagon was pulled back and his little passenger poked her head round it and poked him in the ribs.

  ‘Master Marlowe,’ she said, ‘it’s time to get up. We must be on the road, Hern says.’

  ‘What time is it?’ Marlowe asked.

  The girl looked at him in confusion. ‘Time to get up,’ she said. ‘Time to be on the road, Hern says.’

  Marlowe realized that she had no idea of time as clocks dictated it; the sound of the ever-present bells from tower and steeple which drove everyone else’s world had no place here. He rolled off his sack and nodded to show that he was ready when they were. The women had stoked up the fire and were using a twig to stir something in a pot slung over it on a makeshift-looking tripod.

  ‘What’s in the pot?’ he asked the girl, hoping it wasn’t breakfast.

  ‘Breakfast,’ she told him. ‘We all have to have some, because we never know when we will get another chance.’ She spoke the sentence in the sing-song way that children will who have learned something by rote. ‘It’s oatmeal.’

  Marlowe knew oatmeal. They served it in the Buttery for the sizars and he even had eaten it sometimes. It wasn’t his favourite way to start the day, but the child was right, it did keep you going until something better came along, preferably something sweet and tasty in the Copper Kettle around ten of the clock. It was the twig that worried him a little. But if he was going to be part of this band, he would have to learn their ways.

  ‘Mind out of my way, then, young Starshine. Let me get at that oatmeal. I have some honey in my saddlebags somewhere. Perhaps it will make it slip down a bit easier.’

  ‘I hope you’ve brought enough for everyone.’ Hern’s voice came from round the side of the wagon. ‘We don’t have treats for one and not the other here.’

  Despite the setting, Marlowe was transported back immediately to his days at the King’s School in Canterbury. Old Master Greshop had eyes like a hawk and woe betide the boy who tried to smuggle in a tasty treat for mid-morning. Greshop would winkle it out and its owner would have to stand at the front while the schoolmaster sliced whatever it might be into minute portions so that everyone could have a taste. Although oddly, it never divided up into quite enough portions to give one to its original owner. Greshop’s Law, the school called it.

  Marlowe smiled at Hern as he appeared around the sacking. ‘I have almost a whole pot,’ he said. ‘I would be happy to share with you all. I’ll just get it for you.’ And he delved into the saddlebags which had shared his bed, and more pleasantly than the dogs. He found the honey, next to the letters of introduction to the court of William the Silent. He pushed them further down as he extracted the pot. He handed it to Starshine. ‘Give this to . . .’ he was stuck then, as he had no idea whose child she was.

  ‘Your mother,’ Hern finished the sentence for him. ‘All the women are called mother here and none of the men are called father.’ He laughed. ‘It’s simpler that way.’

  Marlowe looked over to the fire, where one woman stood to one side, wrapped in a thin cloak and scarf which were much cleaner and of better quality than those worn by the other wives. ‘Who’s she?’ he asked. ‘She looks a bit lost.’

  Hern snorted. ‘She’s Balthasar’s latest fancy,’ he said. ‘He picked her up last night when she came to have her future foretold. She’ll not last. She can’t cook, for a start and as far as I could tell she didn’t keep Balthasar very warm last night either. So unless she changes her ways, she won’t be coming far with us.’

  ‘That’s a good black eye she has,’ Marlowe said, peering into the dawn gloom. ‘I noticed it last night, so it’s not from Balthasar, I assume.’

  ‘She came with that.’ Hern laughed. ‘And that’s about all. But Balthasar is a good draw at fairs and he does his share of the work. None of the children are his, so I suppose we owe him a little leeway, but I will be watching Rose to see how she manages. Any trouble and she’s out.’ He gave Marlowe a long look. ‘That goes for anyone, Master Marlowe, you know that I’m sure. No matter how much money they bring, they work for their living, or they’re out.’

  ‘I understand,’ Marlowe said, jumping down off the wagon. ‘Why are we off so early?’

  ‘Early? This isn’t early, man. There’s light in the sky already. We have an appointment to keep today. That isn’t like us, we like to stay free if we can but this day has been arranged since we were in London last and I don’t like to upset a friend. Well, perhaps not a friend, but someone who will put us in the way of good food, some warm lodgings and perhaps a bath for the children, at least. I am beginning to have trouble telling some of them apart.’

  ‘Who are we going to see?’ Marlowe was intrigued as to who might have the power to keep Hern to a time.

  ‘Balthasar is the reason, Balthasar and his soothsaying. Although I can say modestly –’ Hern looked down momentarily and a less modest man it would have been hard to find in a day’s march – ‘that I have skills of my own which interest this man.’

  ‘Won’t you tell me his name?’ Marlowe asked.

  ‘You may know of him,’ Hern said. ‘He is in the Queen’s household, although that means nothing to us. She is not the Queen of the Egyptians. But he is a great magus . . .’

  ‘John Dee?’ Marlowe said. ‘Are we going to Mortlake then?’

  ‘Yes, it is Dr Dee,’ Hern said. ‘Do you have powers of divination too? But we are going to Ely, not Mortlake. He has taken a house there and we are to meet him this afternoon.’

  Marlowe was glad he had decided to keep his own name. The thought of Dee crying out ‘Kit!’ and rushing out to greet him, grey cloak flying with his strange household at his heels would have made any subterfuge very short-lived indeed. ‘I know Dr Dee well,’ he said. ‘We have . . . worked together in the past. It will be good to see him again.’

  The noise around the oatmeal cauldron had been rising as they spoke and Marlowe saw his honey pot going round the fire not once but several times. If he wanted to make his breakfast edible at all, he knew he should get over there as soon as possible. He pushed the problem of Dee to the back of his mind; the man was after all a magus of the most elevated kind. Surely he would foresee that he must be circumspect when they met. He could only hope so. He concentrated on the image of the man from when they had met last and tried to send him messages in the spirit. It was hard to keep his concentration in the hubbub of the camp and hoped that anything that got through was clear enough; he was sure he had sent a jumble of honey, children and smoke rather than a subtle message of intrigue and plots. But it would have to do for now. Air and fire. Fire and air.

  John Dee was getting quite excited now that the day of the Egyptians was here. Helene was more circumspect; in her life before she had met Dee she had worked with groups of travellers, on and off, and was not under any illusions about their timekeeping qualities. Nevertheless, she followed her husband around as he flitted about their rented home, adding touches here and there to persuade their visitors that here lived a magus of the first order. Although he had proved his skills time and again, he still had a touchingly naïve belief in appearances. When he raised the dead, for example, he used so many elements that he would never know which was the one that actually summoned the demon or spirit. Would it, for example, work just as well without the sprinkled blood, or was that a vital ingredient? He never dared to try it; an annoyed demon was the last thing you wanted in your house. Getting rid of the damned thing could take years. So, he hung stuffed lizards from the portraits of someone else’s ancestors, he opened doors in the cellars to create just the right amount of dank draughtiness and he gave instructions to the cook that at least one dish should be a rather disquieting co
lour; blue food always looked a little magical, no matter how well it tasted. Then he settled down to wait.

  From a distant door, a thumping shook the building and Dee started up from his chair. ‘They’re here,’ he cried, all excitement.

  ‘That’s the front door,’ Helene said, all disapproval. These travellers had better know their place or she would know the reason why. Her marriage was unconventional enough, God knew, but she was still the mistress here. ‘Call Bowes and have him send them round the back, John. We can’t have their sort at the front door.’

  Dee looked at her reprovingly. ‘They are my guests, Nell,’ he said gently. ‘Guests come to the front door.’ He scurried through from their snug boudoir and into the Great Hall, soaring up three flights, heading for the door.

  Helene Dee sat back in her chair, eyes closed. Although many decades separated their ages, she sometimes wondered in which direction. Still, it was good to see him excited about something. The fire at their house in Mortlake had taken a heavy toll and she had thought that he would never be like this again, ready to delve into the unknown and see what he might find. She got up and went to the door, pulling it open just a crack. When she had been working in the travellers’ way, she had found a little prior knowledge could go a long way, and listening at doors was only the start.