Black Death

by M. J. Trow

  Forman looked at them through narrowed eyes. He was having trouble focussing at distance lately, but was far too vain to wear eyeglasses. Besides, being a little short-sighted made it easier to handle some of the more raddled widows in his portfolio, and certainly his wife. ‘Well, gentlemen,’ he said, smiling. ‘I hope you all had productive weeks. Very different, all of them, I am sure. I myself have been extremely busy. After you had all gone, I thought to myself, “My lads have gone into the highways and byways and here am I, in comfort. This cannot be allowed to continue.” So, I packed myself a travelling bag and set off myself, to seek my fortune, as it were.’ He gave a light laugh, to show them that they were allowed to smile.

  Gerard, always anxious to please, let out a guffaw, instantly stifled.

  ‘Yes,’ Forman closed his eyes and raised his face to an imaginary sky, ‘I went out into the highways and byways, alongside you all in spirit. I took nothing but a crust of bread, some herbs for healing and my mask, so that the simple people I encountered on my way would know my calling.’ He fell silent, a beatific smile on his face. After a moment, his eyes flew open and he pierced his apprentices with his special basilisk stare, practised over long hours in front of a mirror. ‘They came to me in their hundreds. I was exhausted.’ He dropped his head into his hand and shook it gently. ‘They had nothing, but I gave freely of myself and of my healing.’ He sat up straight and clasped his hands in front of him, to the particular relief of the dove which had been caught under his elbow. ‘And so now, my boys, my brave boys, tell me of your travels. Matthias, you first, I think, as the senior among you.’

  The apprentices all showed signs of relaxation. Just a crust of bread, some herbs and a mask – no mention of the dreaded mirror. All three racked their brains for a better story than the truth; the world was their oyster as long as they could remember what they said later and keep their stories straight. Gerard and Timothy glanced at each other, pleased that Matthias had to go first. The fact that he constantly flaunted his seniority usually annoyed them, when he had the washing water first, the softest pillow, the cleanest under-linen but, sometimes, the pendulum swung in their favour. They turned to him and made their expressions show their interest in his tale of derring-do and healing out on the road.

  Mistress Forman’s maidservant stumbled into the kitchen laughing like a banshee. She often did that, being a little soft in the head, but her mistress, being usually devoid of other amusement, never failed to ask her what was amusing her.

  The girl wiped her eyes on a grubby apron and her nose on the back of her hand. ‘Oh, Mistress,’ she gulped, ‘you would have laughed if you could have heard it.’

  ‘Listening at doors again, Tab?’ Sometimes, the lady of the house wished she could be stricter with her servants, but that would leave just her husband for company and, frankly, that would never do. He had a way with him, she had to give him that, but when he wasn’t giving some poor deluded woman his usual flannel, or whatever he chose to call it, his conversation was less than sparkling.

  ‘Not listening, Mistress, no. The master’s voice carries, as you know. I was just stopped outside the door.’

  Mistress Forman decided to say nothing. She had found out some very useful information this way before now.

  ‘Well, the reason I laughed is that he was spinning such a yarn to those boys, ’bout how he was out and about sleeping under a hedge and whatnot all last week.’

  The magus’s wife raised her eyebrows. ‘I don’t think he even left his bed on Friday, did he?’ she asked.

  ‘No.’ The maid shook out her duster determinedly. ‘Unlucky, he said.’

  ‘Superstitious rubbish,’ her mistress remarked. ‘He was out on Saturday, I suppose, but when I saw him next he didn’t look like a man who had slept under a hedge to me. What time was that?’

  ‘Cock-shut time,’ the girl said, after a think. She was a country girl at heart and though woodcock were not exactly common in Westminster, old habits died hard.

  ‘Or thereabouts,’ her mistress agreed with a sigh. ‘Sunday, I know that.’

  The maid primmed up her lips. How the mistress put up with the master’s filthy ways she would never know. Coming back all hours, reeking of Attar of Roses or worse. And the linen; she tried not to think of the linen, because it turned her stomach, it really did.

  ‘Never mind about it, Tab,’ Mistress Forman gave her a kindly pat to send her on her way. ‘He’ll just be trying to impress the boys, you know how he is. Have you put those sheets out, yet? We’ll have rain before long and we need to get the worst of the wet out of them before then. The master does hate wet washing about the house, you know that.’

  ‘Never mind,’ the maid said, acidly, ‘I suppose he could always go and sleep under a hedge somewhere.’

  ‘One day,’ his wife said, ‘he may have to. Even a worm turns in the end, or so I have heard tell.’

  The maid shuddered. Worms. Newts. Dead pigeons. This house would drive her to Bedlam before it was done, of that she was sure.

  Tom Sledd had always been an early riser, but in Bedlam that way madness lay. As long as he could stay asleep, or at least feign sleep, he could pretend he was elsewhere. The knight on horseback story was wearing a little thin, but it was still something he could call on when the noise and smell got too bad. At the moment, though, his mind was like a nest of vipers and he couldn’t forget how many people had denied him over the last few days. Will Kemp he would expect it of; the man was a total shit. Hal Dignam was better, but completely under Kemp’s thumb. Shaxsper, though; Shaxsper was supposed to be a friend, but he had let him down as well. But none was as sharp as the viper’s bite of Kit’s exit last night, swarming up the walls and disappearing into the night, leaving him there, in the cold and dark, for what might be the rest of his life. He put his head down in his arms and curled up with his sorrow.

  The poet stirred beside him and looked at him covertly through lowered lashes. He could tell that his best efforts were beginning to fail and he didn’t want this innocent man to end up as mad as everyone else in this Godforsaken Hell. As mad as all but one, perhaps he should say. He lifted his eyes and looked around the room with a carefully contrived blank stare. As mad as all but two. He put out his hand and laid it gently on Sledd’s shoulder, patting it absently. He knew what it was like to be lost, though fear had not been part of his life for many a long year now.

  ‘Well, Tom,’ he whispered, so low that only his own soul could hear it. ‘Perhaps it’s time I brought this madness to a close.’

  ‘What was that?’ A rough boot kicked his foot.

  The poet crossed his eyes and raised his voice. ‘The moon’s my constant mistress,’ he intoned. ‘And the lowly owl my marrow.’

  ‘Do what?’ Nat was leaning forward, listening.

  The poet spread his arms and shrugged, wagging his head from side to side. ‘The flaming drake and the night crow make me music to my sorrow.’ He smiled at the gaoler and dropped his head again.

  Nat stood looking at the poet and the theatre manager for a moment longer, then spat neatly into the straw. He had got the feeling from time to time that the poet could tell a hawk from a handsaw, but this morning removed those doubts. The man was as mad as any man here, madder than most. His wife had seen the back of him forever, that was certain. He smiled at the memory. A pretty little piece she was as well. Too pretty to be tied to an old fool like this one. He gave the poet another kick for good measure and moved on. That was one thing about working in Bedlam – every day was different and every day was fun.

  Matthias had missed his calling when he took up his apprenticeship with Simon Forman – the stage had lost a tragedian of some talent. He took a step forward and looked slowly around his little audience. Two of them would know he was lying. He knew there was a risk that the third man there would as well, but it was a risk he was prepared to take.

  He addressed himself to Forman. ‘As Timothy and Gerard both know,’ he began, ‘the mounts pro
vided for us were not of the best quality.’

  Timothy snorted and got an indignant glance from his colleague. Timothy made a rueful face and raised a hand in apology.

  ‘Mine was slow and had a tendency to go lame. At the end of ten miles or so, I could hardly bear its halting gait and so I stopped under a sheltering tree – it had come on to rain – and felt its legs, one by one. When I got to the stifle of its left rear, I knew I had found the trouble. It was hot and felt hard and bruised; a kick from another horse, most likely.’

  Gerard laced his fingers together in distress. Any animal with an injury hurt him to the quick, even when it was entirely imaginary.

  ‘I had no horse liniment with me or any other physick, so I laid my hands on the sore part and willed the pain into me. It was like a lightning bolt, straight through my body. I felt it leave the top of my head, blowing my hair about as it did so and making a crack like that of doom.’

  Forman nodded. Having a horse doctor in his household might well pay dividends. Men had always been hard to attract and keep as clients, but everyone knew a man would pay good money to physick his horses that he wouldn’t spend on his wife.

  ‘My mount was grateful, you could tell. He nuzzled my shoulder as I walked back round to pick up his reins and, as I did so, a woman appeared from where she had been secreted in the hedge. She was of somewhat wild appearance and I must say I was dubious; I feared she had a rough companion who might do me harm.’

  Timothy almost gave another snort, but managed to withhold it. Firstly, the whole tale was a tarradiddle. Matthias couldn’t care less about another creature in the world except himself and, secondly, he was built like a brick privy, so any rough trade would come off the worst.

  Gerard hardly dare breathe. His own adventures were as nothing compared to these. He forgot that he already knew that Matthias had spent the best part of a week being fed and pampered by his mother and sundry local ladies and allowed himself to be lost in the story.

  ‘She was alone, however, and said that her mistress was ill in their house just over the hill. They had fallen on hard times and they could pay me but little, but she could see I had the healing in me and she begged me to visit her mistress, if only to bring her comfort.’

  Forman nodded magisterially. He had had his doubts when he took on Matthias, but his trust was being repaid. This was how you got a foothold in new territory, grew a business. Timothy wiped the smirk off his face. He was rather impressed how Matthias wove small facts into the fiction, giving it an air of verisimilitude.

  ‘A bit of the old special massage, I suppose,’ he muttered out of the corner of his mouth and got a kick on the shin for his pains.

  Matthias dropped his head modestly. ‘I do not need to tell you, Master, how I proceeded. I remembered everything you have ever taught us about the administration of herbs and I am happy to relate that they worked to perfection. Within the hour, the mistress of the house was up and about and I was given lodgings for the night. By morning, the hall was full of the importunate sick of the countryside and – as you know from the modest purse I gave to you – they had little but they gave it gladly.’

  Forman hoped that the importunate sick had not given their last groat. It did no good to bleed any area dry. ‘And where was this place?’ he asked.

  ‘Umm …’ Matthias looked at Timothy and Gerard, who were no help. ‘We had decided to let our mounts lead the way. So I suppose …’ he looked round again but they were still not meeting his eye, ‘it would be north. Northish, in any case.’

  Forman looked annoyed for the first time. ‘You mean you don’t know where this place is?’ he asked, incredulously. ‘Whatever is the point of going out into the world if you don’t know where in the world you have been?’ He tapped his hand on the arm of his chair, irritated with the great oaf. ‘Would you know it again if you saw it?’

  Matthias nodded enthusiastically. ‘I’m sure I would, Master,’ he said. He had been having some rather vivid dreams of the French governess, to the distress of the others who shared his bed and another week off would be very welcome. ‘Shall I go and—’

  Forman flapped a hand. ‘No, no. Your work here is behindhand. Perhaps in a week or so, depending on this dreaded Pestilence. I think now we will hear from Gerard. You brought us no gold, Gerard, but some food. Not what I was expecting, but roots tasting of oyster – now, that is surely a story?’

  But it wasn’t. Gerard was no liar and his story was more or less exactly what had happened. Yes, he added a couple of dozen grateful clients. Yes, he exaggerated where he had been; as he saw it, it wouldn’t help if he told Forman that he had gone to the next bend in the Thames and stayed there a week, surviving on the tag-end of berries in the hedgerow and trout from the stream. Like Matthias, but for a completely different reason, he couldn’t say precisely where he had gone, but he thought it, too, was north. North-east, perhaps. Or thereabouts.

  Forman was disappointed. He had had high hopes of Gerard. He had never expected him to be a big earner, but there was something about his country-boy looks and his innocent demeanour that should have brought the rich widows swarming like wasps to the honeypot. Too honest, that was his trouble. Too straightforward. He made himself a note to teach him the massage – it would be a difficult conversation with one so unworldly, but with it under his belt, so to speak, he would be unbeatable.

  ‘Timothy?’ Forman gestured his third apprentice forward. ‘What of you and your adventures?’ He held up a hand as the lad drew a deep breath. ‘Not the foal. We know about the foal. Tell us what happened before that.’

  ‘I went south,’ Timothy told them. ‘South-west, I suppose, to be more accurate. I do confess I called in at my aunt’s first, but,’ and he glanced at Matthias, ‘I didn’t stay there. You had told us not to rely on friends or family, so all I did was tell her I was not going to be in London and then I set off. I didn’t reach the coast, though. I came into a village – a small town, maybe – clustered around a big house. A few of the hovels were boarded up and the Pestilence was obviously in the place. I had no luck knocking on doors until I thought of my mask. I went round a corner and tied it on and then I was welcome everywhere. Most people are still well there, but they bought my preventative herbs with any pence they had and were grateful.’

  ‘Did you get into the big house, though?’ Forman leaned forward. Follow the money, that was his motto.

  ‘After a day or so, I did,’ Timothy confirmed. ‘The cook there was not feeling well. It turned out that having a waist measurement two yards round was not helping her and her liver was engorged.’ He looked up to check on Forman’s expression. He did not want to overreach himself. ‘In my opinion. I could be wrong.’

  Forman bestowed a gentle smile of condescension. ‘If your tinctures did the trick, you may well be right,’ he said.

  Timothy basked a little. ‘The cook rules that household. The master is often away – they didn’t tell me what he did, but he has other houses, they said.’

  Forman almost rubbed his hands together. He could all but feel the weight of gold in his lap. ‘And where was this place?’ he asked.

  Timothy smiled. ‘I’m sorry. Did I not say? The big house was called Barn Elms. I could take you there, if you want. But if I may be a little boastful for a moment, Master, I don’t believe there is a person in the house or town who will need physick for a while. I was busy day and night when I was there.’

  Forman sat back and beamed at his boys. ‘I am very proud of you all,’ he said. ‘I had considered using my scrying glass but I said to my wife, “No, Mistress Forman,” I said to her, “no. I can trust my boys. I know they will do their best.” You had misfortunes, yes, of course you did. Gerard, you happened upon a poor place, but you were made welcome and that is the main thing. You, Timothy, lost your money when your mare foaled – Matthias!’ A train of thought interrupted him. ‘Make a note to speak to the livery stable about that; they must owe us money for the safe delivery of a healthy foal.
’

  Matthias went to his desk and made a note in the ledger.

  ‘Where was I?’

  ‘Me,’ Matthias said, smugly.

  ‘Yes,’ Forman said, looking him straight in the eye. ‘Well, clearly, your story is a lot of hogwash. Well told, but ultimately too ridiculous for words. Learn from your fellows and always tell the truth. But the purse was useful, so we will let that go for now. Also, a messenger has brought you a letter.’

  Matthias blushed scarlet. ‘A … letter?’

  ‘In French. I don’t read it myself, but it was easy to tell it was of a smutty nature. I will not have smut!’ He beat both hands on the arms of his chair.

  ‘May I … have it?’ Matthias said.

  ‘Mistress Forman put it on the scullery fire,’ Forman told him. ‘There is no room for smut in my house. I will not have it!’

  The three apprentices stood in front of him. Even Timothy and Gerard felt admonished and they had done nothing wrong. Forman was like that – he could make you feel like a lark or a worm with a turn of a phrase.

  ‘But on with the work. Umm … Gerard. Would you like to come through into my sanctum? I need to have a word …’

  The tower of St Ethedreda’s stood tall and square in the noonday sun. October was proving a tricky month and the almanacs were wrong again. It wasn’t exactly warm, but Marlowe’s bay was sweating by the time he took the rise to Hatfield’s gates. The arms of Burghley, quartered and requartered, fluttered above the red stonework, and ancient carts creaked and rattled their way between the house and the town, laden with every conceivable provision that a great household would need.

  There was another flag over the chapel. This one was plain black and hung at half-mast, drifting with the Hertfordshire breeze. A flunkey took Marlowe’s horse under the arch of the gate and he was taken, saddlebags and all, into a vast library, of the type he had not seen since his Corpus Christi days. Huge maps hung on the panelled walls, worlds of faerie where sea monsters snorted in the oceans and anthropophagi watched him warily, their eyes in their chests. The coastlines were guesswork and Marlowe knew that men like Hawkins, Drake, Ralegh and Frobisher, who had actually seen those coastlines, would have something unpleasant to say about them. While he waited, he perused the leather-bound tomes, recognizing most of them and in awe of some. These were not the front of a parvenu, bought by the yard for the look of the thing. It was obvious from the worn spines and the faded gilding that Burghley actually read them, and more than once. Marlowe was impressed.