by M. J. Trow
They held an ice fair that year on the Crow’s Nest, shortly before Christmas, while the great and the good of South Holland tried to carry on as usual and forget there was a war on. Marlowe had toyed with saddling the Wasp and riding north to Delft while he still could, bearing in mind the constantly shifting front lines of the Duke of Parma, but an Englishman riding alone in the Low Countries would attract too much attention. Minshull had told him that the area was swarming with spies, intelligencers and projectors who listened at keyholes and whispered in corners, men like him and Marlowe but who served a different sovereign and spoke a different creed. The man with the halting Flemish would turn too many heads, pose too many questions. Better to stay in the exotic anonymity of the Egyptians. Simon thought that too.
Marlowe was surprised that Simon the Jesuit stayed with them at all; after all, this was Calvinist country and he would find few needing his particular comforts here. That day at the fair with the frost sparkling at the lake’s edge and the locals skating with ease over the ice, he saw the priest hawking ribbons around the area in front of the stage where Hern and his people went through their paces, swallowing swords and eating fire to the gasps of the crowd and the rattle of their gelders. Why hadn’t Simon gone south to Parma’s lines where he could have thrown off the bright ribbons of his disguise and become Father Belasius again, all black and velvet and incense? Something was holding Simon the Jesuit here, on the cold flat fens of the north, and it wasn’t the quality of the cheese or the ale.
‘A gelder for them, Master Marlowe.’ Hern sat down on the blanket next to the scholar who was scratching with his quill on parchment, his fingers numb with cold. ‘Another story?’
‘A poem,’ Marlowe told him. ‘A sonnet.’
‘What’s that?’
‘A poem.’ Marlowe smiled.
Hern laughed that deep bass laugh of his. ‘Why weren’t you born an Egyptian?’ he said, slapping his man on the shoulder. ‘Is this one for tonight?’
‘I thought I’d try it out,’ Marlowe said. ‘Looking at this lot, the locals of South Holland could use some culture.’
‘Ah.’ Hern smiled. ‘Creatures of the clay, Master Marlowe, creatures of the clay. They’ve been holding fairs like this since Jesus was a carpenter’s apprentice. They don’t look like rebels, do they?’
Marlowe had to agree that they didn’t. Knots of portly men, blue-nosed and pot-bellied, stood around braziers at the water’s edge nattering away in Flemish and northern Dutch. Vats of boiling oil balanced on the grids above the flames disgorged baskets of crisp bitterbollen on to their waiting plates while a child offered up pots of the mild mustard for dipping. Women in their wide white hats were admiring the silks and satins that fluttered from the stalls all round. Blonde, grey-eyed children pushed each other on to the ice or dragged little sledges up and down while dogs yelped and ran in all directions. There wasn’t a gun or a sword or a soldier in sight. Only Kit Marlowe felt the dagger nestling in his back under the bright reds and yellows of his Egyptian costume. He wondered if Hern felt iron too but he couldn’t see any bulge in his doublet.
Hern whistled an Egyptian lad to him and whispered in the boy’s ear. Marlowe had seen him do this before at many of their stops since the Hook and he knew what was going to happen. Like a ghost, the boy slid into the crowd at the edge of the Egyptian stage. High in the air, the streamers flew and twirled, spiralling in myriad colours to the boards, then flashing skywards again. And all eyes were on them, hypnotized by the sway and curl of the ribbons, their senses marching to the thud and rattle of the drums and tambourines, though their feet seemed glued to the grass. The boy moved through the fair, silent, like a will-o’-the-wisp that haunted the Stour in Marlowe’s Canterbury.
In minutes he was back, beaming, and he quietly dropped six fat purses in Hern’s lap. The lord of the dance swept them up and they were gone. He winked at Marlowe and ruffled the boy’s matted hair. ‘Try the ice, Tomaso,’ he said, ‘but stay near the edge. The Devil’s in those depths. Don’t let him catch you.’ And the boy was gone.
‘I saw him take four for certain,’ Marlowe said, ‘and I think I know where he took the fifth. But I didn’t see him take the sixth.’
‘Nor the seventh,’ Hern said and threw Marlowe’s own purse back to him.
The would-be Egyptian laughed.
‘Take my advice, Master Marlowe,’ Hern said. ‘Carry that near your codpiece. You’ll feel it if it shifts from there.’ He swiftly stood upright. ‘Ah, if I’d had you in my camp fifteen years ago, what I could have made of you. Good luck with your scribbling.’
And Marlowe checked his purse once more as the man disappeared like smoke into the crowd.
They came from the south on the road that ran straight and true through the vennen, the heather criss-crossed with dykes. The sky was leaden over the church spires of Delft and smoke drifted lazily from the ragged pauper hovels that ringed the town walls.
The Town Watch circled those walls, armed to the teeth and watching the roads intently, especially the roads to the south. That was the way the Spaniards would come, with their flags and their cannon, the oxen clashing on the road and the giant crucifixes black against the sky. Marlowe, bouncing on the lead wagon beside Hern, chuckled to himself at the thought of Joe Fludd and his lads facing this situation and not knowing one end of an arquebus from another. Different times. Different crimes. Perhaps an army just over the far horizon made learning happen quickly; learn quickly, or die.
The Egyptians began to beat their drums and blasted their trumpets, Hern standing up and waving his banner in both hands, feet planted firmly on the board of the wagon. The children dropped silently from the rumbling carts and grabbed the ribboned manes and tails of the piebald horses, springing up on to their backs and hauling the littlest ones up behind them, their shrill voices breaking into song to the drum’s rhythm. Marlowe added his voice to theirs, the cadences and harmonies of church music chiming oddly but sweetly with their innocent melodies.
They entered Delft by the southern gate and passed unchecked through the narrow streets to the square in the centre where the Nieu Kirke loomed over everything, grey and squat like the burghers who had built it. A crowd of people and dogs began to coalesce around the caravanserai as it spread out ever more thinly to accommodate the narrow twists and turns of the lanes. In places, the houses met overhead and from every window an apple-cheeked head seemed to pop out, maidservants interrupted in their bed-making by the sound of the drums and singing, housewives and nursing mothers hanging out of the upper storeys, babies on their arms, waving and singing back at the children. Marlowe, still more used to the welcome they got in England, with rotten apples thrown by day and creeping figures needing potions and portents by night, felt his heart lift at the welcome, and almost forgot that he was here for another purpose than to entertain the crowd. The spy sank down lower as the poet, singer and temporary tumbler rose to the occasion.
Soon, Tomaso was about his sneaky business in the crowd and Hern was swallowing swords and fire, regurgitating lines of flags in the Statholder’s colours. Balthasar’s tent had gone up in double quick time at the edge of the square and a shifty line had formed at its door, each person in it trying to pretend that they were just standing there, there was no particular reason why they should be there rather than here, they were just resting there out of the bitter northern wind off the vennen. One by one, they disappeared into Balthasar’s particular kind of darkness and, mostly, they emerged with a complacent smile on their lips. Balthasar was feeling kind today; he would not be dispensing death and destruction to the good burghers of Delft. They had enough of that a horizon away.
Marlowe crept away, skirting the edge of the crowd and disappearing neatly down a narrow alley. The Prinsenhof, which had stood out so boldly at a distance from the town, was not easy to find in these towering tunnels of houses. Whenever he got to where two alleys crossed he got a better view of the sky and so, by turning left and right and sometimes
even going back on himself, he reached the wall of the Prinsenhof itself.
There was no gate or door along the whole length of the wall as far as he could see. The place had all the hallmarks of a nunnery, sealed and secret from the world. He swaggered nonchalantly along, turning each corner as he came to it as if there could be no danger around it, though he knew this was probably far from the case. The crowd the Egyptians had drawn was a two-edged sword for Marlowe. It had enabled him to slip away, but on the other hand it had almost emptied the streets and this made him all the more noticeable. Finally, he turned a corner and could see a gate ahead of him.
He approached it at a purposeful walk, trying to look as though he was on an errand of mild importance. This had worked often enough for it to be worth a try. The halberd heads clashed across his face as he stepped over the threshold. A guard snarled something at him and Marlowe summoned up his Flemish. He passed his papers across, the ones given to him by Faunt who in turn had got them from Walsingham. The guard didn’t recognize the seal and couldn’t read the language. He muttered to a third man who was pointing his arquebus at Marlowe and the scholar gypsy was pleased to see that the Statholder’s security had clearly improved.
There were shouts and heel-clicking and an officer arrived in a plumed helmet, clanking down the stairs in hobnailed boots. He looked at Marlowe in his Egyptian coat of many colours and looked at the papers. He snapped at one of the halberdiers who threw his weapon to his comrade and patted Marlowe’s clothing, his body, his arms, his legs. Then he stood back.
‘This way,’ the officer growled, but Marlowe stopped him, sliding the dagger from the small of his back where the guard had missed it.
‘To show my good faith.’ He smiled.
The officer rapped out a string of oaths that Marlowe didn’t understand to the guards who looked suitably chastened. By way of explanation, he muttered, as far as Marlowe’s Flemish could tell, ‘You can’t get the staff,’ and he snatched the dagger’s hilt. ‘Pick this up on your way out.’
He led Marlowe through a tangle of passageways, the walls lime-washed like the Puritan churches back home and up a broad staircase. He was shown, beyond the huge double doors, into a lofty antechamber, where glittering-eyed burghers sat waiting to press whatever suit burghers the length and breadth of Europe waited to press. It would be about market stalls and grazing rights and trading concessions. Didn’t they know there was a war on?
The officer had unbuckled and removed his helmet and was in earnest conversation with a court official, a tall, refined-looking man with a neatly trimmed goatee above his impeccably starched ruff. The man looked Marlowe up and down and immediately disapproved. The visitor looked like a wandering lunatic and they had enough of those in Delft already. He nodded at whatever the officer said to him and crossed to Marlowe, beckoning him into a side room.
There was a stir among the burghers. ‘I’ve been waiting for nearly three hours.’ ‘That man’s a tramp, what’s he doing here?’ ‘I demand to see the Statholder.’ The rumble of outraged citizenry throughout time. Beyond another set of doors, which closed behind him with a thud, Marlowe found himself alone with the tall man.
‘Who are you?’ he asked in the clipped dialect of the court.
‘Christopher Marlowe.’
‘Where are you from?’
‘Cambridge University.’
‘You are a scholar?’
‘I am.’
The tall man sat quietly in a covered chair, poring over Walsingham’s papers and proceeded to ask Marlowe questions in Latin, then in Greek. He answered them fluently. Then there was a silence.
‘But personally,’ Marlowe went on, still in Greek, ‘I’ve always found Aristotle a little laboured on that point. Ramus says . . .’
The tall man held up his hand, smiling, and lapsed into surprisingly good English. ‘All right, Dominus Marlowe. I have no doubt that you are a scholar. But what else can you do?’
Marlowe smiled in turn. ‘I am learning new things all the time,’ he said, ‘but speaking for this moment, I can write a play, cut a reasonable rhyme, sing tolerably well. More recently, I have learned to turn a somersault, as long as somebody gives me a hand with the first bit, but I am improving. But most importantly and also, I hope, with a little help from you, I will keep your Statholder out of the clutches of Spain.’
The tall man stood up. ‘I am Hans Neudecker, Chamberlain to His Highness the Prince of Nassau. You will wait here.’
Marlowe did, a large clock on the far wall the only soul for company as it chimed the hour. When the doors opened again, a lady glided into the room, followed by two others. Her dress spoke of finery and wealth, but she wore no jewellery and her face was sallow and drawn. Instinctively, Marlowe bowed.
She held out her hand to him. ‘I am Charlotte of Bourbon-Montpensier,’ she said in French, ‘Princess of Nassau. You are Monsieur Marlowe?’
‘I am, Highness,’ Marlowe replied in the same language.
‘We will speak in English,’ Charlotte said. ‘Even here, walls have ears.’
He nodded, grateful at least for that. She took a seat and ushered him in to one next to her while the ladies-in-waiting waited. ‘I fear,’ she said softly, ‘you may have come too late. The doctors advise that my husband cannot recover.’
‘Forgive me, madam,’ Marlowe said, ‘but time is of the essence. I heard at the Hook that the Statholder was ill. Do you rule in his place?’
‘Rule?’ Charlotte laughed bitterly. ‘One town and miles of marshland, hemmed in on one side by the sea beggars and on the other by the might of Spain? Oh, yes, Master Marlowe, my kingdom knows no bounds.’
‘Forgive me, lady.’ Marlowe was still trying to find a way to reach this woman. ‘Your husband’s doctors will of course be the finest in the land?’
‘I have no reason to doubt them.’ Charlotte sat upright, suddenly on her dignity. The letters that Hans had shown her a moment ago bore the seal of the Privy Council of England and the lion and dragon of Elizabeth, the Queen. Yet the man before her wore the rags of a pedlar and a mad one at that. And here he was, questioning the ability of the royal doctors.
‘Nor I,’ Marlowe said. ‘But I have people with me who may yet be able to help.’
‘People?’ Charlotte frowned. ‘What sort of people?’
‘Egyptians,’ he said. ‘Is that what you call them in this country?’
Hern looked at Marlowe sternly and put his hands on his hips. ‘That is not how we work, Master Marlowe, and you know it. We never offer our services to people. They have to come to us, it is part of the cure. You know that.’
‘But, Hern, this could do us a lot of good. Think how much the Statholder would pay the person who cured him. Soft beds and soft living for the rest of the winter, if that’s what you want. I know the women would welcome it, especially Maria. Her time must be nearly here.’
‘How did you know that Maria was with child?’ Hern snapped. ‘It is not the way with our women to let the child show. Her clothes should hide it from all eyes except the father’s.’
‘I have not been travelling with you all these weeks without learning some tricks,’ Marlowe said. ‘So, you have just told me for certain that you are the father. Thank you, I didn’t know that for sure. Maria stands with her hands in the small of her back when she straightens from her tasks. I remember seeing other women do that; our women are not so shy about letting the child show. Also, she is given treats to eat by the other women, fruit when there is any, the inside of the bread, rather than the hard crust.’
‘Clever watching, Master Marlowe, but that doesn’t tell anyone when a woman is with child, just that she has kind friends.’
‘Also, I happened to come upon you and Maria behind the wagon the other day. You were kissing her and stroking her belly. That was what gave me my biggest clue.’ Marlowe waited to see if he had gone too far, but Hern threw back his head and laughed.
‘At last, Kit Marlowe, you are a true Egyptian,’ he r
oared. ‘Yes, you are right, the child could come at any time. Maria is not young any more and this child may give her trouble. She would be glad of a safe home for a while. But if we fail to recover the Statholder’s health, what then? If he dies, we will be held responsible. We could all dance on the end of a rope, men, women, children. You.’
Marlowe took this without a flicker. This was true, except that it was doubtful that he would ever dance on a rope. ‘I have seen Lily heal the sick,’ he said. ‘In the house of John Dee, just weeks ago. I’m sure she can do this.’
‘It will be Lily’s choice,’ Hern said. ‘I will put no pressure on her. But, and I must ask this, Master Marlowe, how were you in a position to offer our help to the Princess of Nassau? The royal family of any country are not usually to be found at our shows. Simon missed you in the tumbling. He had to content the crowd with some shows of strength.’ Hern pictured the debacle in his mind silently and shook his head. ‘It was not a success, I must tell you. The vegetables are frozen hard in these parts in December. He is nursing his bruises.’ He smiled in spite of himself. ‘So that’s where you were, was it? At the Prinsenhof?’
‘A sister of mine is married to the brother of one of the maids in waiting to the princess,’ Marlowe extemporized. ‘I went to see if I could say hello. On my brother-in-law’s behalf.’
‘How kind. What a close family you must have,’ Hern said, straight faced. ‘And did you?’
‘Did I what?’
‘Say hello on your brother-in-law’s behalf?’
‘No, sadly. She was off duty today. But I did happen to bump into the princess. She was on her way from her husband’s bedside and we got . . . chatting.’
Hern looked hard at the ragged thing in front of him, a sartorial shadow of his former self. And yet there was something in the soulful dark eyes and the angel’s mouth which said that it was possible, just possible, that he could end up chatting to a princess he met in a corridor. Hern decided to believe him, just this once. ‘And so, she mentioned . . . ?’
