by M. J. Trow
The Constable nodded. She’d certainly had a pair of lungs on her, had Gammer Harris.
‘So,’ Hazel said, looking solemnly into Fludd’s face, ‘she had to be silenced.’
‘Where was Jem while all this fortune-telling, shouting and stealing was going on?’ the Constable asked. ‘Where was her husband?’
‘In the Lammas Field,’ Hawkins told him. ‘Hedging. Like what they pay him for.’
‘Who told you that?’ Fludd wanted to know.
‘Everybody,’ Hawkins said.
‘Did everybody see him?’ Fludd asked.
‘Er . . . Well, he’s always there.’ Hawkins held his ground. ‘There or not far away. The Lammas field has got a lot of hedges. No sooner’s he got round it once, it’s time to start again, more nor less.’
‘Did anybody see him?’ Fludd repeated, slowly and deliberately. There was no answer this time. Least of all from Gammer Harris.
A cold rain thudded into the thatch of Jem Harris’s hovel that night. He and the Constable sat in front of a roaring fire, one of the few benefits of being a hedger. The trimmings had to be burned anyway, so why not on his fire?
‘So –’ Jem was sipping an ale he kept for special visitors – ‘you saw him hanged, then?’
‘With my own eyes,’ Fludd lied. ‘After he’d confessed, of course.’
Jem looked at him, eyes bright in the firelight. ‘Why did he do it? Did he say? Did he tell you why he killed my Ann?’
‘You know these Egyptians.’ Fludd shrugged, though clearly Jem Harris didn’t. ‘Moon-driven. Mad as corn hares in harvest time. I expect you miss your Ann, Jem?’
‘Oh, I do, I do,’ the old man said, helping himself to another draught from the pitcher.
‘Her nagging.’
‘Yes.’
‘Some women.’ Fludd laughed. ‘My Allys is the one. Got a mouth on her like Hell in those old mystery plays. Remember them?’
‘I do,’ the old hedger crowed. ‘I miss all that, you know. The good old days.’
‘Yes.’ Fludd was in full flow now. ‘Still, you won’t really miss old Ann’s whine, will you? There are some days I could take hold of Allys and beat her backside raw. It’s “Joe, have you done this? Joe, where’s that? Joe, when are you going to get round to the other?” Drives you mad, doesn’t it?’
‘It does,’ Harris enthused. ‘It does.’
‘Is that why you did it, Jem?’ Fludd was suddenly quiet, staring at the man sharing the fire with him. ‘That morning? Had she nagged you once too often? Is that why you took your billhook to her head?’
Harris blinked, then swigged from the pitcher. ‘What about the Egyptian?’ he whispered.
‘There was no Egyptian, Jem,’ Fludd told him. ‘There never was. Why should an Egyptian set foot here? Man, there’s nothing to steal but a flagon of ale and some firewood. Those people live by their wits. They don’t need to kill. Especially some harmless old woman like your Ann.’
‘Harmless?’ Jem exploded. ‘Harmless? Are we talking about the same Ann Harris? Nag, nag. She never shut up. I’d flogged her, beaten her. Even had her put in the scold’s bridle once – before your time, young Fludd. You’re ma would remember, God rest her soul. I just . . . just lost my temper, that’s all. The red mist just came up and then, when it was over, I pulled the billhook out of her head and went hedging. It’s quiet in Lammas Field, you know, Joe. Peaceful. No nagging.’
There was a silence and the two men looked at each other.
‘What happens now?’ Harris hardly dared ask.
Fludd stood up. ‘Now, you’ll come with me, Jeremiah Harris,’ he said, ‘on a charge of murder.’ He patted the man’s bony shoulder. ‘And we’ll find you somewhere quiet.’
The servants were used to it, of course; the master ambling around the knot gardens on his grey old mule. His robes hauled up over the saddle and his feet almost touching the ground, he was usually to be found letting the animal wander while he had his nose in a book. Cicero from the saddle. He meandered in the scent of box, rosemary and thyme, depending on the taste of the mule that particular day. The animal’s browsing defined the flavour of the air.
This morning was a little different. The hoar frost lay thick on the low, trained hedges and jewelled the spiders’ webs with a sparkling faerie dust. The master was wrapped up against the cold, a huge woollen cloak trailing the ground as he rode, the capacious hood over his head, shading his face. Beside him strode Sir Francis Walsingham, who would rather cut off his own arm than ride a beast of burden such as this. He had rather hoped to have this conversation in the man’s library, warming his arse before a roaring fire and borrowing a book, or in his study or even his private chapel – anywhere with walls and a roof. But this was William Cecil, Lord Burghley, the right hand of the Queen and no one, not even Francis Walsingham, called the tune in his presence. So the pair plodded their way past the sharp, red brick of the North Front, the frost sparkling on the broad steps in a band where the sun had not reached.
‘So, it’s treason then, you’re sure?’ Burghley asked, looking at the ice thick on the carp pond and his breath snaking out from under his hood into the morning air.
‘We have Throckmorton’s confession. I felt a little sorry for him in the end.’
Burghley halted the mule with a sharp tug on the rein. He leaned back in the saddle so that he could look into Walsingham’s eyes without giving up the warmth of his hood. ‘You won’t lose sight of the point of all this, Francis, will you?’
‘My Lord?’ the spymaster frowned.
‘The bigger picture,’ Burghley told him. ‘The continued safety of Her Majesty and the peace of her realm.’
‘My every waking thought,’ Walsingham said and he meant it, even if it did mean trudging through a frosty morning in air that froze the blood. ‘Shelley and the other conspirators in Sussex are under lock and key, awaiting the Queen’s pleasure.’
‘Kill them.’ said Burghley. ‘We’re not playing games here, Francis. We must cut out the canker in this country’s heart. I don’t care whether it is Catholic or Puritan. I’ll draw up a Bond of Association.’
‘A bloody process, my Lord,’ Walsingham observed.
Burghley nudged the mule on again. ‘What news from Delft?’ he asked. ‘Nothing gets to me here at Hatfield. I must get back to Whitehall.’
‘By some miracle, my Lord, the attempt on the life of the Statholder failed.’
‘Miracle, Francis?’ Burghley didn’t look at him. ‘What do you and I know of that?’
‘I know that a wheel-lock pistol fired at point blank range should have blown the head off William of Nassau, but it didn’t. The man yet lives.’
‘By a hair’s breadth, I heard.’
‘True, but his wife nurses him day and night.’
Burghley smiled. ‘They’re good like that, wives,’ he said, smiling up at the leaded panes of the east wing where Lady Burghley, his Mildred, still lay wrapped in her eiderdown. ‘So what should we do?’
Walsingham found himself chuckling. ‘My Lord, it is not for me to dictate the policy of the state . . .’
‘Policy of the state, my arse,’ grunted Burghley. ‘Walsingham, we are the state. One slip from us, one wrong judgement and we may as well kneel before the Bishop of Rome and pay court to any Catholic Johnny-Come-Lately who doffs his cap at the Queen.’
It was Walsingham’s turn to stop and he turned to face the Chief Secretary. ‘But surely, the Queen won’t . . .’
‘Succumb to marriage?’ Burghley reined in the mule again and eased his backside from the leather, letting his frozen toes touch the ground. ‘I gave up on that one long ago. I leave predictions to wizards like John Dee, men who read the weather and the stars and the way bones fall. I deal – as do you, dear Francis – in reality. And the reality is that the Queen is the most eligible ruler in Europe if you discount Philip of Spain.’ He looked into Walsingham’s eyes. ‘And we all do discount Philip of Spain, don’t we?’
&nbs
p; Walsingham smiled and walked on. ‘If William survives?’ he asked.
‘If the Statholder survives and lives to take on Philip and Parma and the whole Godless tribe of them, I for one will be amazed. If he doesn’t and if the Low Countries should fall to Spain . . .’
‘Then we’re next,’ Walsingham said, finishing the Chief Secretary’s sentence for him, even without the prescience of the Queen’s magus.
‘There’ll be other attempts,’ Burghley said. ‘Other Juan Jaureguys to break through the cordon of the Statholder. And William the Silent will be silent for ever.’
‘I have a man for that,’ Walsingham said, ‘to watch his back.’
‘Oh? Who?’
‘A new face. Name of Marlowe. It was he who closed the Shelley business. You’ll have read my dispatch.’
‘Of course.’ Realization dawned on the Chief Secretary. ‘Is he sound? One of us? Can he stand on his own two feet?’
Walsingham smiled. ‘I prefer men who can think on their feet while they are standing on somebody else’s.’
‘Good,’ Burghley said. ‘Good.’
‘I sent Faunt to him, but of course that was before recent events in Delft. I still intend Marlowe to go, but his brief is ever more desperate now.’
‘I don’t need the details.’ Burghley waved the man aside. ‘That’s what we pay you for. Come on, Walsingham, time for breakfast. We’ve braved this ghastly weather for long enough. The cold gets to my bones these days.’ He looked up at the turreted splendour of his house and the grey clouds building from the east. ‘What will it bring us, do you think, this new year of our Lord?’
Walsingham smiled. ‘I never think of that before the Christmas fires die. The Lord of Misrule has a habit of making a mess of things.’
‘He does.’ Burghley sighed. ‘He does indeed.’
It took Hern several hours to negotiate with the master of the Antelope to take his menagerie across the North Sea. There were the horses and the dogs, the two monkeys, the parrot and the snake. And then, there was the nature of the human cargo to be reckoned with. These people were Egyptians, weren’t they? On the run from something or other. The Master of the Antelope wasn’t a religious man. He followed the laws of God and Elizabeth when he could by attending church once a month, but everybody appreciated that running with the tides off Norfolk carried a schedule of its own and he couldn’t always arrange time with his Maker. So it didn’t matter to him whether his passengers were Egyptians, Calvinists, Lutherans, Papists or Anthropophagi with their faces in their chests; it was just a matter of cash, pure and simple. And everyone had his price.
Hern, on the other hand, had done this before too and he had a knack of getting discounts for this or that reason, even when the price of the crossing was fixed and there was no room for negotiation. There had even been one spectacular occasion when a particularly unwary Master had paid him for the privilege of transporting his people.
It was another grey day when the Antelope sailed, canvas tumbling in the raw wind and the ketch coming about to hug the Norfolk coast. All that first day they followed it, the Master tacking to take advantage of the wind as little fishing villages came and went.
‘Is this your first time in the Low Countries, Kit?’ Balthasar Gerard stood on the forecastle in the raw morning air, tugging his cloak around him against the weather.
‘It is,’ Marlowe told him. ‘You know it well, I suppose?’
‘I am a Frenchman,’ Gerard said, although his accent seemed universal, ‘but in my calling, I go anywhere. Everywhere.’
‘I have been impressed by what I have seen,’ Marlowe said, ‘but I still can’t see where the trickery ends and the real fortune-telling begins.’
‘As Hern told you,’ Gerard said, ‘when you can do that, you will truly be an Egyptian.’
‘Do you forget nothing you hear?’ Marlowe asked him. Hern had said that as a throwaway line, weeks before, when they were first on the road and before everything else had happened; Helene, Rose, all the bad things.
‘I remember everything,’ Gerard said, ‘in one part of me, my heart, my head, my guts. I am the only true teller of the future in this band, although other troupes have others. Not as good as me, I must say, in all modesty.’
‘So . . .’ Marlowe knew he must tread warily. ‘You knew about Rose and what would happen?’
‘Not in exact terms,’ Gerard said. ‘I try not to see my own future. What man could stand to do that? But I knew our time together would be short. Yes, I knew that.’
Marlowe pressed a little harder. The more he probed these people, the less he seemed to know. ‘So, although you knew she would kill Nell, you still took her to Ely?’
‘Did she kill Helene Dee?’ Gerard asked. ‘I am far from sure, but when I try to look, all is mist, turns and twists and I can see nothing.’
Marlowe was unimpressed. How often the fog came down when the soothsayer was forced to look into something he had not already arranged to happen and, the oddest thing of all, Balthasar had done nothing to save the girl. When he realized that Constable Sedgrave had her in his clutches, he just meekly let her go. ‘Couldn’t one of the others see into that part,’ he asked, ‘if you yourself can’t? Surely, you all have the skill of prophecy, to a greater or lesser degree? That’s what Hern says, at any rate.’
‘Hern speaks for Hern,’ Gerard said. ‘It is true that the children of the moon are as varied as the colours of the rainbow. They all have their skills.’
‘If you are the best, then,’ Marlowe said, ‘tell my fortune, soothsayer.’ And he pressed a groat into the man’s hand.
Balthasar Gerard looked into Marlowe’s eyes. ‘Are you sure?’ he asked. ‘I do not give readings to please the payer, except to the ignorant who couldn’t face the truth. You might not like what you hear.’
‘You have my money, Master Gerard,’ Marlowe said. ‘Time for your end of the bargain.’
The Egyptian held up his hand. ‘Remember,’ he said, ‘I am only Balthasar. We have no surnames here. Our pasts are behind us. We have only the present and the future. Today and tomorrow.’
‘So be it,’ Marlowe said.
The soothsayer took a deep breath and held Marlowe’s hand flat, palm uppermost. He looked up into his face for a moment. ‘There is greatness here,’ he said. ‘You will be remembered for all eternity.’
Marlowe laughed. ‘I’m flattered,’ he said, when he realized that Balthasar wasn’t smiling. ‘Go on. How shall I be remembered?’
‘A line,’ the other continued, tracing the lines in Marlowe’s palm. ‘A mighty line. There is a thump, a rhythm. I cannot describe it. No one has heard it before, but others will claim it as their own.’ He suddenly faltered. ‘I see blood,’ he said, ‘much blood. Paris. Do you know Paris, Kit?’
The scholar gypsy shook his head.
A strange look flickered across the grey face of Balthasar Gerard. ‘Near the bed,’ he said, in a voice that didn’t sound like his own.
‘What?’ Marlowe didn’t understand.
‘There is a place,’ Balthasar said, speaking slowly, tasting each word for sense as it left his mouth and finding little, ‘a place where great ships come, some in pieces. There is . . .’ he shut his eyes tight, his grip firmer on Marlowe’s hand, ‘a stream, a raven.’ He opened his eyes suddenly. ‘Does any of this make sense to you?’ he asked.
Marlowe shook his head again.
Balthasar let his hand drop. ‘That is where you will die, Kit,’ he said, solemnly, ‘where the great ships lie, by the raven’s stream.’
‘Near the bed!’ Marlowe reminded him, smiling.
The Egyptian smiled too, the dread moment gone. ‘You don’t believe me.’
Marlowe slapped the wooden rail that ran around the Antelope’s deck. ‘I believe in this –’ he reached out to the rough hemp of the rigging – ‘and this. What I can see and smell, taste and feel.’
‘Liar!’ Balthasar Gerard laughed at him. ‘You are a dreamer, Kit, a poet.
When I heard your tale of the Queen of Carthage, I knew that. You and I are both children of the moon in our different ways.’
‘Are we?’ Marlowe asked. ‘Well, then –’ he turned his face into the wind of the North Sea – ‘amen to that.’
Night found the Antelope butting through the breakers, her compass holding as she ploughed south-southeast. Kit Marlowe was asleep in his bunk at the stern when he heard it, a low chanting like a dream from his childhood. For a moment, he was back in Canterbury, jumping the puddles in the cobbles as he ran to school, past St George’s Church and on into Mercery Lane, with his old friends Henry Bromerick, Tom Colwell, Matty Parker. He heard the bells of the cathedral clash and call, prisoners in their great stone towers and he heard the hiss of the cane as a scholar stumbled late under the Dark Entry that led from the cloisters; Master Greshop flexing his muscles.
Slowly, his dream faded and he was aware of his surroundings. Above him the timbers of the deck were black with pitch and the beams were thick and knotted to his left. The bunk was narrow, a makeshift bed wedged between the frames and the horse hair pillow flat and unyielding. He popped his head over the side to where Balthasar Gerard snored softly in the bunk below. Across the narrow aisle where the night lamp swung, its tallow candle spent, he could make out the shape of Hern on the top bunk opposite his and Frederico on the bed below.
‘Near the bed.’ Balthasar’s incomprehensible words moaned in his head with the roll and roar of the sea and the creaking of the timbers. He propped himself up on one elbow. There was no mistaking it. He wasn’t dreaming now. It was a paternoster, half sung, half whispered, and in Latin. It had been a long time since he had heard this, the prayer of hope but in the language of the damned.
