by M. J. Trow
‘Yes, she mentioned her husband was gravely ill, had been in a deep unwakening sleep for weeks and none could help him. She looks close to death herself, in fact. Very sallow and ill-looking. She perhaps needs some attention too. But if her husband could be woken, that would be a comfort to her, at least.’
‘But again I say, what if he dies?’
‘Why should he? Was Lily’s performance a trick?’
Hern smiled. Lily’s powers of healing was one of the Egyptian skills which was not a trick. But it wasn’t foolproof, either. Sometimes, it didn’t work and in this case it would not be a simple matter of being chased out of town in a rain of rotten fruit and imprecations.
‘It was no trick, Master Marlowe. Lily is with the children in the middle wagon. Go and ask her if she will help. But no coercion, mind. And that means no fluttering those eyelashes either. Just ask her straight, and take her first answer, whatever it may be. And don’t forget, I’ll find out if you lie.’
‘I promise, Hern.’ Marlowe said. ‘I’ll just put it to her that there is a man out there in the town who has been the victim of terrible plots to kill him and he is lying close to death, wearing out his wife, breaking the hearts of his children and putting his entire country at risk of being overrun by Spanish troops intent on pillage, rape and driven by religious mania. Then she can make up her own mind whether to help him or not. Is that fair?’
Hern cast up his eyes and flapped his hand at the man to go and do as he pleased. Whatever else he had learned about Kit Marlowe, he knew that he would at least always do that.
John Dee always did as he pleased too, but at that moment, back over the lumbering, bouncing sea to Ely, he was incapable of conscious choice. Sam Bowes and the cook were worried about him, a more or less permanent state of affairs for any members of his household. That the man was peculiar, fractious, as demanding as any child was an undoubted fact, but Bowes and the cook loved him like a father; which was odd, as Sam Bowes could have given him ten years and kept the change. But even when he was so distracted that he forgot to eat, or speak and went about in sulphur-stained robes with half his hair burned off, he was still the Master in the house and no one made a move without it being the move he had told them to make. So, Sam and the cook were like kites with broken strings and no wind to speak of. They just bounced aimlessly around, never going far, never doing much, just watching their Master and trying to get him to eat and perhaps be interested in something.
The cook, the gossip of the party, had the women of Ely in for ale and cakes every afternoon. The women enjoyed it, as a chance to wear their best caps and sit in front of someone else’s fire for a change. The cook, of course, was in search of an interesting conundrum to make her Master sit up and take notice. But humdrum not conundrum was what the women delivered and Sam Bowes was glad that Dee took no notice of the household accounts. The amount of butter, sugar and eggs that the cook was getting through was something amazing and yet still there was not a hint of a puzzle for their Master to solve. This was mainly because the murder of Helene Dee had been the most stupendous thing that had happened in the area for centuries and that was all they wanted to talk about. The cook decided to give up the afternoon meetings as a bad job and was looking for Bowes to tell him so when she bumped into her Master as he came round a corner at more than his usual speed.
‘Where’s Sam?’ he asked, with no preamble.
‘I’m looking for him myself, sir,’ the cook said.
‘Well, find him quickly, quickly. We’re going back to Cambridge. I have decided that I am going to live at my old college, St John’s, for a while. Perhaps I can forget . . .’ he waved a hand over the Hall and the staircase. He seemed to conjure up the rest of the house in a cloud of memories streaming from his finger ends, as well as all the other houses they had lived in, finding Helene that first time, telling fortunes on a village green, seeing her in the smoke of his fire the night before, his lonely life before she was in it and since.
‘I thought perhaps if I could go somewhere where she had never been, I might be able to forget her for a while.’
The cook understood that. She had had a family once, husband, children. But when they died of the sweating sickness she had shaken the dirt from her feet, left her cottage door open for whoever needed it and joined the mad household of Doctor John Dee. Edward Kelly had been with him then, and he had eased her heart for a while, until he had broken it all over again. She heaved a sigh. She had loved Nell like a daughter and missed her very much, in the evenings, over her endless slices of toast.
‘A change of scene will do us all good, Master,’ she said. ‘Shall I pack?’
Dee waved his hand again. ‘No,’ he said. ‘We’re going now, as soon as you can find Sam. I want to be in my rooms by Christmas.’
‘Where will we be?’ the cook asked, panic seizing her by the throat. She was too old now to start again and the toast had taken its toll on her once girlish figure. There would be no Edward Kelly to warm her bed this time, she was sure.
‘You can have rooms too, I’m sure,’ Dee said. ‘I am after all one of St John’s most revered alumni. There will be no problem in finding room for us all. Quickly, quickly, fetch Sam and put on your cloak.’ He looked at her, as if for the first time. ‘You have grown portly, cook. Can you ride a horse?’
‘If someone helps me up on one,’ cook said. She had ridden bareback over the South Downs when she was a girl. She heard that riding a horse was something you never forgot how to do; she hoped that that particular old wives’ tale was more accurate than most of the others.
Dee looked her up and down again. Twenty stones if she was a grain, he was sure. But that was what Bowes was here for. And sure enough, here was Bowes, running down the corridor on his bandy legs. Cook would make three of him on a good day, but he was probably stronger than he looked. Those wiry types often were.
‘There you are, Samuel,’ Dee cried, with something of his old animation. ‘We’re off to Cambridge, so fetch a coat for yourself, there’s a good chap. It’s freezing out.’
‘What do I need a coat for?’ Bowes was confused. It had taken two months to pack for this move. Surely, the Master couldn’t mean that they were going to Cambridge today? For a start, there was a goose fattening in the barn, for the Christmas dinner and all sorts of gentry invited for the season. The Leslies would have expected as much.
‘Because,’ Dee said, enunciating clearly, ‘we are off to Cambridge and it is freezing out.’ Ye Gods and Demons! First the cook balloons up to a hundred times her original size and now Bowes has gone simple. He felt as if he was waking from a dream, some of it sweeter than sugar, much of it bitterer than gall. ‘So, get your coats, cloaks and whatever you need. I am just going to pack a satchel with my essentials and off we go.’ He turned and went back into the room he had been using as his snug, rubbing his hands together. ‘It will be just like old times.’
Bowes looked at the cook. ‘This is your fault,’ he said severely. ‘You would do it!’
‘All I did was ask that Egyptian for a charm,’ she said, her voice wobbling with emotion. ‘It seemed polite, after they did all those tricks. It only cost me a groat.’
‘And did you use it?’
The cook looked down at where she was pretty sure her feet were. ‘Yes,’ she said, sullenly.
‘And what did you wish for?’
The cook mumbled, but Bowes could not hear what she said.
‘Humph,’ he said. ‘All I can say is that you should have listened to what Nell always said. Be careful what you wish for. It might come true.’ He looked at her as she stood there, head down, wringing her hands in distress. ‘Now, then. Go and get your cloak and I’ll get the horses round. How are you at catching geese?’
She looked up, alarmed.
‘No, I thought not. I’ll catch it, then. At this rate, it will be so tame none of us will want to eat the damned thing. Tell the Master the horses will be round the front. And bring a chair out with you
. There is no power on Earth, in Heaven or Hell that will help me get you up on a horse’s back. You’ll have to climb up yourself. Quick now, shift yourself, woman.’ He gave her a slap on the rump as he went round behind her and she stood quivering with indecision in the middle of the Leslies’ Great Hall.
Bowes went muttering round to the stables and saddled up two horses. The third horse, because he was not an unkind man, he put in the harness of an old dog cart that was collecting cobwebs in the corner. If she asked, or went all coy on him, he could always say it was for the comfort of the goose.
ELEVEN
Lily was with the women, as Hern had said. She was massaging Maria’s back, but stopped as soon as Marlowe poked his head around the sacking at the back of the wagon, parked in the angle of the courtyard walls.
He flashed a smile at the two. ‘Congratulations on your forthcoming confinement, Mistress Maria,’ he said, pleasantly. ‘I wonder if I might have a word with you, Mistress Lily? In private?’
The two women were not sure what to make of this young man, who seemed to be in the world, but not of it. That he was not attracted to Maria, forty years old almost and pregnant, was one thing. That he had seemed impervious to Lily’s grubby charms however had so far confused them. He had seemed very drawn to Rose, but then, who wasn’t? Balthasar, hitherto as chaste as Marlowe, had behaved like a lovesick puppy whenever she was around, and had been distant ever since Ely. But now he had obviously come to pay what passed for court in the Egyptian caravan. Maria nudged Lily in the ribs and rearranged her layers of clothing to hide her pregnancy.
‘Off you go, Lil,’ she said. ‘My back will wait. Perhaps Master Marlowe’s need is more urgent than mine.’
‘I hope so,’ Lily said in her ear, hopping down off the back of the wagon. She had had her first child when she was just thirteen, an infant herself, almost, and had not had one for nearly four years. That first child had been Frederico’s and he had only been fifteen. Fatherhood, even the Egyptian kind, had not suited him and he had not slipped his body into her sleeping place for years. Her body ached for a baby and this handsome lad would make fine and beautiful children, let alone that they would be clever and could become something special one day. Almost before her feet had touched the ground, she was rubbing against him and muttering sweetness in his ear.
He pushed her away, but not unkindly. ‘Thank you, Lily. Very nice. But for now I have an important job for you.’
‘What can be more important than what I can do for you right now? Right here, if that is your fancy.’
Marlowe looked around and saw at least eight pairs of eyes watching him, nine if he counted the cloudy gaze of one of the older horses as a pair. ‘There are rather a lot of people around, Lily,’ he reproved her. ‘But even if we were alone, this is not what I want to ask you.’
Lily pouted and pulled away. ‘What, then?’ she asked, sulkily.
‘Come for a walk with me,’ he said, ‘and I will explain.’
From the fireside, Hern watched them go. Lily was again pressed as close to Marlowe as she could get, without tripping him up in her flowing rags. She was looking up into his face, adoringly. Then, about twenty paces from the camp, she turned and faced him, looking up still, but now with a calculating look in her eye. Hern saw Marlowe cast his arms out, over the camp, the town, the whole country – possibly even the earth and heavens. Marlowe was good with words, but his body was just as eloquent. Hern sighed. Why could that boy have not been born an Egyptian? Surely, on the night his soul was ready to return to earth, it went to the wrong family. A cobbler would not know what to do with such a boy.
Then, Hern stiffened. Lily had agreed, he was sure of that. Marlowe touched her hair, tidying it around her face. He turned her hands over and smoothed the back of one hand down her face. He picked up a layer of ribboned rags and let them fall. For a second, Lily’s face fell. Then, he reached into his belt and took something out, which he passed to the girl. She looked down at it, bit it and ran for the town. Hern shook his head and smiled to himself. He remembered that he had not forbidden bribery and reminded himself not to forget it again.
‘The rooms are taken, Dominus Greene,’ the proctor insisted.
‘Taken?’ Robert Greene narrowed his eyes at the man. For four years he’d known this idiot, boy and man and their true minds had never married. ‘By whom?’
The proctor consulted the ledger with its spidery scrawl. ‘Dr John Dee and two servants. And –’ he squinted a little at the writing and held the book up at a different angle, hoping that might help – ‘a goose.’
‘A goose?’ Greene was almost speechless.
‘That’s what it appears to say here,’ said the proctor, putting the ledger down again. He pointed. ‘One goose.’
‘Is this or is this not, Master Proctor, St John’s College of the University of Cambridge?’
‘It is, Dominus Greene.’ The proctor sighed, knowing exactly where the man was going with this line of unreason.
‘And you are letting out rooms in this hallowed hall to a goose? The damned thing will be elected Master next and we’ll have to kiss its wing feathers.’
The proctor held up his hand. ‘I am merely a link in the chain, sir,’ he told him. ‘I do as I’m commanded by a higher authority. As do we all.’ The emphasis was not lost on Greene but he had no intention of backing down now. His own rooms were not uncomfortable but they faced north-east and the wind blew the river smells along the cobbles and they eddied up into his apartments in the summer. In the winter, the wind just blew. To the north-west however lay a particularly imposing set of rooms belonging to Richard Clare that were the envy of every graduate and sizar in the college. And Richard Clare had gone of the ague not three weeks since. There had been a full college funeral, everyone in their academic robes laced with black and a suitably mournful-looking Robert Greene had composed a requiem. But all that was just so much show and so three weeks ago. The rooms had been thoroughly cleaned and Greene had watched the bedder in question with a hawk’s eye to see how she fared. When there was no sign of sickness after three weeks, Greene decided that the time was right to strike, before anyone else got the coveted rooms. So now, here was Greene, on his dignity. In fact, it was not often he was off it.
‘You do know, sir –’ the proctor came over all conspiratorial – ‘who Dr Dee is, don’t you?’
‘Of course I do,’ Greene snapped. ‘The Queen’s magus. That doesn’t give the man the right—’
‘He was a member of the college, sir, before my time, but my old dad remembers him well.’
‘Yes, well,’ Greene sniffed. ‘I’m very happy for your old dad’s reminiscences, but I am a member of this college now.’ He paused as that particular bomb merely bounced off the granite that was Proctor Boddington. ‘Tell me, Boddington –’ Greene only ever used the man’s name when he wanted something – ‘why is Dr Dee coming to St John’s?’
‘I’m sure I don’t know, sir,’ Boddington said, stern-faced.
Greene sighed and reached below the man’s counter, jingling silver in his purse. Boddington caught the coins expertly, had the temerity to test them with his teeth and pocketed all but one. That one he pushed back towards Greene. ‘Dud, sir, sadly,’ he said and waited. Greene, with a sigh, replaced the forged penny with another which passed the molar test and Boddington went on. ‘His wife’s died,’ he told Greene. ‘At their house in Ely not a week ago. They do say . . .’ He bent lower to the graduate, pausing in the hope of more inducement. When it was clear that none was forthcoming, he carried on nonetheless. Since Mrs Boddington had had it away on her toes with the dairyman, he had few to exchange gossip with, and this had been burning a hole in his tongue. ‘They do say she was murdered.’
Greene’s eyes widened. ‘Do they now?’
‘The old man’s prostrate with grief. Coming back to his roots for comfort, they do say.’
‘And do they say how she died?’ Greene asked.
The proctor tapped t
he side of his nose. ‘I know what you’re thinking, sir,’ he said, as if he and Greene were twins born in time, ‘the husband did it. Whenever there’s a domestic ruction such as this, sir, look to the spouse.’
‘But you said Dee was prostrate,’ Greene reminded him.
‘A front,’ Boddington told him flatly. ‘He’s blaming the Egyptians.’
‘The Egyptians?’ Greene repeated. This began to sound more and more like the weakest excuse in the world for not letting him have those nice, warm, west-facing rooms.
‘You know, the band of ruffians who passed through the town. Constable Fludd was on their tail, they do say, but he might as well have pissed into the wind. Dee invited them to his place at Ely, to talk magic or whatever Devil-driven nonsense they speak. They say the constables at Ely have taken one of their women for the crime.’
‘Who are “they”?’ Greene asked.
Sometimes, Boddington wondered just how these scholars ever got their degrees. He spoke more slowly. ‘Egyptians, sir,’ he said, sounding every syllable with exaggerated care.
‘No, you said “they say”. Who are they that say?’
Boddington frowned and his disbelief that Greene was an actual graduate of St John’s at all deepened. He threw up his hands. ‘They, sir,’ he repeated. It would have to suffice. ‘They also say –’ Boddington’s nose was almost in Greene’s ear-ringed ear – ‘that that Christopher Marlowe was with them. You know, the one they call Machiavel.’
The driving sleet had driven most of the good Cambridge folk off the streets by nightfall. The husbandmen had shut the cocks away, the market stalls had dropped their shutters along Petty Cury and the scholar roisterers had downed the last of their ale and had made for their colleges, ready to run the nightly gauntlet past their proctors.
The clock of St Mary’s clanged the midnight chimes as the three men ordered more wine in the upstairs room of The Eagle and Child along Bene’t’s Lane. Dr John Dee, in his funeral black, had been drowning his sorrows in his old drinking haunt when he had been hailed by an acquaintance, Dr Gabriel Harvey of Corpus Christi and an Italian-looking fellow with an earring who, Dee was horrified to discover, was of Dee’s own college. They had spent the evening talking of this and that, of the likelihood of war with Spain or France; of the foolhardy nonsense of sending Francis Drake to sea on some wild goose chase; on the cost of claret and the new trend coming from London, drinking smoke.
