Witch Hammer

by M. J. Trow

  Joyce snatched up the fallen man’s sword and stood defiantly, waiting for her turn. Three horsemen leapt the wagons together in the centre, somehow holding their seats as the animal’s hoofs clipped the flats. Props and scenery crashed to the ground and Martin was hacking about him with St George’s sword. Will Shaxsper was with him, the stage enmity of Christendom and Islam forgotten as they traded blows with the milling riders.

  ‘Forget it!’ Sledd roared at Marlowe. The moment for terrifying the enemy had gone and now it was every man for himself. Little Liza had leapt upwards and was hanging around a horseman’s neck, taking vicious bites out of his right ear as he tried to fling her off. John and another of the Clopton lads had floored another horseman and were busily kicking him into unconsciousness by the Whispering Knights.

  Sledd was doing his best to protect his wagons with their precious cargo of stage paraphernalia. Thomas had dragged Liza’s quarry out of his saddle and now just stood back while she proceeded to haul the man about the arena by his hair, calling him names only some of which were familiar to the boy. Marlowe made for Paget, his rapier flashing as he thrust for the man’s doublet. Paget wheeled his horse and parried for his life. He felt a stinging pain as Marlowe banged the fancy quillons off Paget’s sword and he saw in disbelieving horror one of his fingers fly with them. He was about to pull back to try and regroup his isolated horsemen when a horn rang out, shivering through the cries of horses and men.

  It grew louder and more insistent and was sounding from the north-west. ‘I told you!’ Marlowe yelled above the crash of battle. ‘The Earl of Warwick. Good old Uncle Am!’

  And Paget’s spent force, bloodied and bowed, hauled back on their reins and slunk away.

  The horns were still braying from the far side of the hill and when a mere two riders appeared. Everyone was secretly glad they had approached from Paget’s blind side or the fight would still be raging.

  ‘Caesar’s cavalry!’ shouted Marlowe and reached across and poked Sledd in the ribs. ‘Thank the buggering echo in these hills, Ned. Not good for rehearsals, but damned useful to us today.’ Sledd grinned and nodded, slumping against a wagon to get his breath. Marlowe sheathed his sword and stepped forward to welcome the newcomers.

  The horsemen cantered into the circle of stones and brought their foam-flecked horses to a stop. It was Richard Cawdray and Simon Hayward, out for a gallop on a bright afternoon.

  ‘Gentlemen.’ Joyce Clopton crossed to them and they both bowed in the saddle. ‘You are very welcome. You may have saved our lives today.’

  ‘Ah, it’s nothing.’ Cawdray slid out of the saddle. ‘Simon said his horn would come in handy. We saw you were having a little difficulty from a couple of miles away. What’s happening here, exactly?’

  Marlowe took the two men by the arm and led them away from the circle. ‘How long have you got?’ he asked them.

  THIRTEEN

  The sun had all but disappeared over the Warwickshire fields when there was a stir from the remnants of Paget’s men skulking along a line of pollarded trees above the brook.

  ‘Horsemen coming!’ Thomas sang out, still watchman, having by far the best eyes in Lord Strange’s Men. ‘White flag.’

  Everybody crowded to the wagon sides, improvised weapons at the ready again.

  ‘I knew it wouldn’t fool them for long,’ Sledd muttered to Marlowe. ‘Nice try, though, Master Cawdray.’

  The huntsman nodded.

  ‘Ho, the camp!’ a voice called out in the gathering darkness.

  ‘That’s Edward Greville,’ Joyce Clopton said to Marlowe. ‘I’d know that devil’s voice anywhere.’

  ‘What do you want?’ Sledd shouted back.

  The knot of horsemen under the flag of truce shifted and a lone rider nudged his horse forward. ‘Lady Joyce,’ the voice cried. ‘I would speak with Lady Joyce.’

  While the watchers on the ridge tried to work out what this new ploy was, Joyce ducked under the guide rope and stepped outside of the wagon circle. It was Marlowe who stopped her. ‘Not wise, My Lady.’ He reached out and took her arm. ‘Better you stay here. Ned? Fancy an evening stroll?’

  ‘Why not?’ Sledd shrugged. ‘What’s a life to lose, when all’s said and done?’

  ‘Liza,’ Marlowe called, ‘can I borrow your apron?’

  The camp follower hesitated. ‘I will get it back, won’t I, Master Marlowe?’

  ‘As I continue to live and breathe,’ he said to her with a smile. He drew his sword and tied the apron around the point, waving it in the air as he and Sledd sauntered down the hill. Half turning, he said to Scot, ‘Keep Lady Joyce company, Reginald.’ And to Shaxsper: ‘You too, Will.’ The glover-turned-actor looked less brave now that the darkness gathered.

  Greville steadied his frisky mare as the flag-bearers reached him. ‘I wanted Joyce Clopton,’ he growled.

  ‘Many men do, I am sure,’ Marlowe said. ‘What is your business?’

  ‘Who are you, popinjay?’ Greville snapped.

  ‘I am Christopher Marlowe, playwright. And you?’

  The horseman straightened in the saddle. ‘Sir Edward Greville, Lord of the Manor of Stratford.’

  ‘Then you’re trespassing on the Earl of Warwick’s land,’ Marlowe told him, as aware as Greville of the pecking order among the gentry.

  ‘Trespassing, my arse!’ Greville spat on the Earl of Warwick’s turf. ‘I have a lawyer here with a dislocated shoulder and a captain of my household with a finger less than he started out with this morning, and all because of you.’

  ‘Take it to the Court of Chancery,’ Marlowe told him.

  Greville narrowed his eyes and looked the poet up and down. ‘You’re the sworder, aren’t you? The man who came looking for me at the Swan with Strange. How is His Lordship, by the way?’

  ‘Exceedingly well,’ Marlowe said, ‘and under the protection of the Queen by now, at Nonsuch.’

  ‘How very sweet,’ Greville said, his voice dripping acid. ‘Rather like old William Clopton, under the protection of his maker.’

  ‘Indeed,’ Marlowe said. ‘I suppose you have come to pay your respects, have you?’

  ‘No need,’ Greville said. ‘I’ve done that already. When I came across his makeshift grave at Clopton.’

  Sledd looked at Marlowe, then back at Greville. He couldn’t resist a glance back up the hillside to his waiting people. ‘His body’s with us,’ he told Greville. ‘Up on the hilltop, in a coffin with a pall and everything.’

  The Lord of Stratford looked at the men and stifled a laugh. ‘Is it?’ he asked. ‘That was the question I wanted to put to Lady Joyce herself.’

  ‘Unavailable,’ Marlowe said and folded his arms. ‘Lady Joyce is not receiving visitors today.’

  ‘What’s going on?’ Sledd asked. The conversation seemed to have escaped from him and he wasn’t quite sure how.

  ‘It’s quite simple,’ Greville said, shifting in the saddle. ‘Sir William Clopton died – sad, but inevitable. His daughter, incomprehensibly, blamed me and was driven to distraction by his death. She knew she’d have to abandon her home, but she couldn’t bear the thought of the old man lying anywhere but Clopton, so she had him buried in the deer park, no doubt –’ he scowled at Marlowe – ‘with the full rites of the Papist church.’

  ‘So . . . let me get this right,’ Sledd said. ‘That coffin is empty.’

  ‘Oh, no.’ Greville chuckled mirthlessly. ‘I dug up the old bastard’s body, just to make sure nothing else had been buried with him. Blake found the treasury rather short, you see. No, what is in that coffin –’ he nodded to the wagons and stones on the ridge – ‘is the gold and silver of the Cloptons, which is, by rights, mine.’

  ‘Don’t you mean the Queen’s?’ Marlowe asked. ‘The forfeit property of a recusant? I’m sure Master Blake will have told you the law, even if you didn’t know it already.’

  ‘The Queen’s, then,’ Greville acknowledged. ‘But I shall protect it on her behalf.’

&nb
sp; Marlowe closed to the man’s horse so that the white flag dangled near his face. ‘You’ll have a hell of a job trying,’ he promised. ‘This conversation is at an end.’

  And he turned on his heel to trudge up the hill, Sledd floundering with as much dignity as he could muster in his wake.

  ‘How much are we talking about, Kit?’ he whispered when he’d caught the poet up. ‘In the coffin, I mean?’

  ‘Who steals my purse, steals trash,’ Marlowe told him, ‘or in this case, Lady Joyce’s purse.’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ Sledd muttered. ‘We know all that, but I’m seriously out of pocket here. With Strange gone, hopefully temporarily, and the damage those bastards did to the props wagon earlier . . .’

  ‘I’m sure Her Ladyship will reimburse you, Ned.’ Marlowe untied the apron from his sword point and passed it back to Liza.

  ‘She’d better!’ Sledd stormed, breaking away from Marlowe’s side and marching off in a temper towards the King Stone.

  ‘What did Greville say?’ Joyce asked Marlowe as he sheathed his sword and accepted a cup of wine from Will Shaxsper, who then showed signs of lingering on the edge of the conversation. Marlowe thanked him with a nod and waited, face impassive until he moved away. Then he turned back to Joyce Clopton. ‘He wants what’s in the coffin,’ he said.

  ‘My father’s body?’ she said, in high dudgeon. ‘How could he ask such a thing?’

  Marlowe put down the cup on a wagon step, where it was quickly appropriated by Joseph, who was still feeling the after effects of shock, as he told anyone who would listen. He still had a rusty helmet on his head. Marlowe grabbed Joyce firmly by the shoulder and led her into the dark beyond the wagons. ‘Not the body,’ he said, shortly. ‘The gold.’

  She gasped and pulled herself away from him. She wanted to run, but she didn’t know where to go. ‘You looked!’ she hissed at him. ‘You told him. You traitor.’ She pulled her head back to spit in his face, then burst into tears instead.

  ‘I didn’t look because I had no reason to doubt that the coffin held your father’s body. You are the liar here, My Lady, not me, don’t forget. Does Boscastle know what you did?’

  ‘Of course he does,’ she snapped. ‘Who do you think dug the grave?’ She suddenly grabbed Marlowe’s hands, squeezing them tightly. ‘How did Greville know?’

  There was only one way to tell her and that was straight with no embroidery. ‘He found the grave.’

  ‘Oh my God.’ Joyce crossed herself. ‘You don’t mean he . . .?’

  ‘No,’ Marlowe said, shaking his head. Better by far that Joyce Clopton never heard the truth. Greville had not gone into detail, but he was unlikely to have reinterred the old man with full honours. Marlowe did not like to think of the fate of his body now. Personally, he had no strong views on how a body should be treated after death; after all, it was just meat by then. But there was such a thing as respect for your fellow man and he was certain that Edward Greville was woefully short on that particular trait. ‘Don’t worry. He found the fresh-turned earth and questioned some of your people at the Hall and put two and two together. He doesn’t miss much, your Sir Edward Greville, I’ll give him that.’

  ‘He’s not my Sir Edward Greville,’ she reminded him. ‘And if I were a man, I’d give him six feet of the Earl of Warwick’s land. I have asked you before, Kit Marlowe, to kill Edward Greville. I have less to offer you now, but I ask you again; will you do it?’

  He looked at her, the little lost girl, the disinherited Lady, the icy heroine all rolled into one. ‘A stab in the dark?’ he said quietly. ‘That’s really not my style.’

  It had been one hell of a day. Not everyone had been injured in the brawl with Greville’s men, but most of them had a story to tell in which wounds featured even if the marks had now miraculously healed. The supper round the fire had been scanty; time enough in the morning to repack the wagons properly and find out what food and other bits and traps remained unbroken. For now bread and cheese would suffice. Cawdray and Hayward had some pie packed up in their saddlebags, which they nobly gave to the women to share. They had ridden off at dusk, to the comfort of a nearby inn, so there would be pie enough for them, and anything else they fancied too. Hayward might be a huntsman but he drew the line at sleeping under the stars in the company of potential vagabonds and thieves. Cawdray, rather stage struck, would have happily stayed, but as a good guest he went with his host, waving regretfully over his shoulder. Nat Sawyer’s story was lurid, redolent with sweat flying, hand-to-hand combat and death being looked squarely in the face. No one had seen him crawl under the wagon and so most of the troupe listened agog. Sledd was sulking wrapped in his cloak by the King Stone and although he had accepted some food from Liza, he wouldn’t talk to anyone. He was feeling very hard done by. Marlowe and Scot had talked and talked the subject of the battle to death, along with the coffin full of gold and the perfidy of women in general, and witches in particular. It was hard to get Scot off his hobby horse once he was firmly astride. Marlowe put an extra guard on the coffin and gradually the camp fell asleep, once Joseph had run out of scurrilous catches to sing, in drunken discordance.

  The dark was intense outside the ring of wagons. The women in the trees had stopped watching once the campsite had fallen asleep and soon they were sleeping too, wrapped in their cloaks or curled up in the roots of a tree, according to their preference. The self-appointed keeper of the Stones slept propped against one of the Whispering Knights, one eye half open but even so dead to the world. The various whistles and grunts of dozens of sleeping people filled the night and drowned out the smaller sibilances of mole, vole and weasel as they went about their varied business in the grass and ground of the Rollright Stones.

  A darker darkness detached itself from a wagon and crept across the space between the stones, searching the rolled-up bodies on the ground, peering at them one by one in the moonlight. Sometimes, the figure knelt beside one of the sleepers, head bent, as though listening to a secret. But always, the secret proved not the answer, and the figure moved on. It slipped between two wagons and disappeared into the night. There was a muffled oath and a clatter of conversation, which died away into silence again. The camp slept, fitfully or like the dead, according to their taste, until dawn broke, with the promise of heat already in the sun as soon as it broke cover over the crest of the hill.

  Slowly, the sleepers woke and found their bumps and bruises had not been improved by a night on the cold, hard ground. Nat Sawyer had a lovely black eye, from his one and only blow sustained in the fight, but it gave verisimilitude to his story and he flaunted it like a badge of courage. Everyone was soon at their various tasks, appointed since they had gone on the road, things to pack, rubbish to bury, heads to count before the wagons could roll towards Oxford and a chance for Lord Strange’s Men to strut their hour upon the stage.

  There was of course the complication of Lady Joyce and her Clopton people, and the fact that Edward Greville would trail her to the mouth of Hell to get what he wanted. So it was agreed, at least to Marlowe’s satisfaction, that she would stay with the cavalcade for safety and at Oxford throw herself on the mercy of the town. After the bloody nose Blake and Paget had been given it was unlikely that the Lord of Stratford would try anything again, at least in broad daylight. So now, it was all hands to the wagons and the Devil take the hindmost.

  And it may have been the Devil who screamed that morning as the cocks began to crow in the distant, still-slumbering villages. The sound scraped through everyone’s brain like a nail on slate and all heads swivelled to its source. Liza came scampering across the flattened, yellow grass, holding up her skirts with one hand with the other held like a flag of truce above her head. Her eyes were wide with terror and her face turned up to the sky, mouth red and wide in her scream. The horses shifted and whinnied in panic and everyone in the camp started off to meet her.

  Thomas, who had been on watch on the ridge, woke up with a start at the terrifying shriek and for a moment wondere
d where he was. He instinctively tightened his grip on the pike in his hand and looked down to the line of birches where he knew Greville’s men were still camped. There was no movement there. There were no fires on that already warm day and the horses held their lines. Nobody seemed to be standing, except Thomas’s opposite number, who threw his halberd across his chest in a movement designed to repel cavalry. He had clearly heard the scream, too.

  The keeper of the Stones was not surprised to hear the scream. These people had been treating her precious circle as if it were a village green since they had arrived. They had tried to count the stones. They had not respected the stones. The pennies on the watching stone had been three ha’pence short. She heaved herself to her feet and walked towards Liza, now in the middle of a group of women, pointing frantically behind her to the King Stone. She was babbling, but the keeper didn’t listen. She just kept up her rolling gait in a dead line to the stone. She and Marlowe got there about neck and neck. They looked down at what had made Liza scream and run.

  Ned Sledd lay below the stone, his bedroll pulled back, his britches still on and his doublet rolled up under his head. But his eyes were open, staring at the puffy clouds which scudded far overhead and his shirt front was spotted dark brown with his blood. Buried deep in his throat was a silver-handled bodkin. And it was one Kit Marlowe had seen before.

  He was still squatting by the body, holding the dead, cold hand of Ned Sledd when the keeper of the Stones suddenly spoke. She turned to the approaching crowd of Lord Strange’s Men and the Clopton people. Her voice started low, and rose in tempo and timbre as she declaimed her rhyme to the sky.

  ‘Rise up, stick,’ she muttered, ‘and stand still, stone, for King of England be you none. You and your men hoar stones shall be. I myself, an elder tree.’ And she suddenly pushed her way out of the circle of gathering spectators and was gone, skimming across the smooth grass like a galleon in full sail.