Perfect Shadows (19 page)

“Come, Robert, I’ll see you home,” said the old man, slipping an
arm over his son’s shoulder, and they left, Robert Cecil looking over his
shoulder now and then, as if to sort out what had gone wrong, and narrowing his
eyes at the sight of us, still close by the queen’s side.

“You have made a bad enemy there, your grace,” a quiet voice
said behind me, and I jumped at the hand laid on my shoulder. I stepped away
and turned to face the man who watched me from hooded reptilian eyes. He had
sandy hair, with brows and lashes almost invisible against his sallow skin, a
tall, thin build and a scholar’s slightly stooping shoulders. With another
ill-concealed start I recognized him: Henry Percy, the Earl of Northumberland.

“Any enmity is of his own making,” I said, hiding my agitation
under a blanket of indifference. “I am certain that we may think no ill of a
man who acts in defense of his sovereign, however mistakenly. If you will
excuse me, my lord?”

“If you would indulge me but a moment more,” the earl said,
catching at my sleeve, “there is something I am most curious about. How is it
that you speak our tongue with such facility? I would almost take you for a
Kentishman, your .. . grace.” I pulled out of his grasp.

“You flatter me,” I said, and added over my shoulder as I walked
away, “I had an English nurse.” I could feel those cold eyes boring into my
back as I went to join the dancing.

Frizer’s inn at Eltham was easy to distinguish, with its air of
disorderly menace. I feigned ignorance of the stir my entrance caused. Though
raffishly dressed, I appeared well-to-do in that company. I requested and was served
a cup of sack, and settled in to observe. By midnight the crowd had thinned to
several men on the far side of the room, and a sullen, lank-haired woman
dabbing at the tables with a rag. Frizer had certainly come down in the world,
his prim parson’s demeanor shed with his vaulting ambition. He was scruffy and
down at the heels, his beard untrimmed and his hair unkempt. He detached
himself from his fellows and made his way to the bench where I waited, pausing
long enough to snap at the woman, who flicked a quick and frightened look at
me, then fled from the room.

“Will you be wantin’ a bed?” Frizer growled. He stood with his
meaty hands on his hips, looming over me. I smiled, and Frizer’s frown
deepened. “Too good for an honest inn, be you?”

“Not at all. Mayhap too good for this one.” By ones and twos the
others were leaving. When we were alone, Frizer reached down and grasped the
front of my doublet, and I let him pull me to my feet. Before my renascence
Frizer had had the advantage of me in inches, but now we were eye to eye.

“Well, now, if y’hand over your purse, perhaps I can persuade my
friends out there not to lay hands on ye.” Frizer’s breath stank of cheap wine,
and for a moment I sagged, overcome by the memory of my murder, of being
helpless in this man’s merciless hands. Frizer laughed, thinking me faint with
fear, and shook me. Then he was being held by both wrists, and slammed down
onto the bench, while I bent over him, feeling my lips twist into a feral
smile.

Holding his crossed wrists easily in one hand, I smashed the
heel of the other up under his chin, knocking his head against the wall with
stunning force. As he slumped, I caught him again, cracking a blow across his
cheek. Calmly I lowered the lax hands, and just as calmly bent his right thumb
back until it broke. He came to with a howl, that doubled in volume as the left
thumb was broken, then dwindled to a whimper. “Why? Why me?”

“As you’ve asked, Ingram, I shall tell you. Do you remember
Deptford, Ingram? Eleanor Bull’s house? Do you boast and brag about getting
away with murder that sultry, summery day?”

“M-m-marlowe? N-n-no! Dead! Dead and buried!”

“So I am often told. I think not. But you will be. You may thank
Sir Thomas Walsingham that I do not kill you outright, and if I hear that you
have troubled him again in anyway, I shall kill you anyway. Or if I should hear
further tales of travelers molested after leaving your inn.

“You see, it was I cut Nick Skeres throat for him, Ingram,” I
said, and laughed. “You should have seen his blood spouting through his
fumbling, useless hands,” I continued, pausing a moment to lick my lips, and
Frizer shuddered. “Do you remember when you so kindly told me what I could
expect from a traitor’s death? I shall not be so refined with you, but the
results will be the same. You will be begging me to die, before it’s done,
scrabbling through your guts with your own two hands. Oh, not tonight, but one
day. One night you will see me again, and you will know then that I have come
to collect the reckoning.

“You could cheat me, of course. If you bandy the tale of this
night about, you will certainly be locked up as a lunatic. I would still kill
you, but it would have to be quickly done. Not that you wouldn’t beg for it,
after you’d been locked up in Bedlam for a time.” I stepped back, poised in
case he should attack, but the man just sat there, rigid, slack-jawed and
beginning to drool. A touch at my arm whirled me around, and I almost struck
her before I realized it was woman I had seen earlier.

“My lord, you best go out the back. They be waiting for you in
the yard,” she said, her voice dull and colorless. She looked down at Frizer
with apathetic eyes. “It’s the apoplexy; he’s had small fits before. One day,
God willing, he’ll die of it.” I was surprised at the venom in her voice, until
I noticed the bruises on her arms. She hastily rolled the sleeves of her shift
down to cover them. Shyly, she offered me a half-smile, and I thought that at
one time she must have been quite pretty. Almost without volition I drew her to
me. She resisted for only a second before sliding into my embrace. I left her,
dazed from the pleasure of my feeding, there on the bench beside her husband.

As I stepped from the front door of the inn, I spotted my
adversaries hidden around the inn-yard. Five of them, two armed with swords,
two with cudgels, and one with what appeared to be a length of stout chain.
They couldn’t know that I had seen them, and I strode through the courtyard to
the tumble-down shack that served as a stable. They moved then, but not as
silently as they believed. Before any of them could reach me, I had drawn my
sword, and stood smiling at them over the length of it. Within seconds all were
bloodied and the two swordsmen were down, one with a death wound. The others
fled. I laughed aloud, retrieved my horse and rode into the night towards
Blackavar, well pleased with my night’s work.

I heard there was great wonder the next day in Eltham, when
Mistress Frizer told how the two swordsmen had quarreled and fought each other.
The survivor agreed with her tale, for to dispute it would be to admit a
murderous assault upon the one-eyed stranger.

We had taken a house in Chelsey when the court had moved to
Whitehall, and I attended the Queen every night. To forestall further trouble with
the court bravos I challenged three of them, one after the other, to an
exhibition of swordsmanship, and her majesty bade us perform before the
assembled court. The third man was Henry Wriothesley, the young Earl of
Southampton, handsome, arrogant and attractive. . . .

Southampton’s dark auburn hair almost brushed the floor as he
bent to retrieve his rapier. “This was no fair trial,” he said, with a sulky
bad grace. “If you were right-handed—”

“The sinister troubles you, my lord? No matter,” I said, and
switched my rapier to my right hand, on my blind side. There was a muttering
among the onlookers, and the earl had the grace to look abashed as I saluted
him with my blade. The second bout took but little longer than the first. Even
as his sword touched the floor, Southampton was already striding away. I bowed
to his rigid, retreating back, then turned to accept the applause of the court.
I picked up the earl’s fallen blade and gave it to a passing servant,
instructing him to give it into the earl’s hand. The hilt had still been warm
from his grip—I seemed to feel that warmth on my palm for a longtime after, and
mightily regretted offending the elegant, intelligent, and above all, handsome
young man.

“My lord, I was told to give you this,” Jehan said one evening
not long after, handing me a folded piece of paper.” He said you’d be able to
read it,” he added in answer to my quizzical look, and went to shake out the
clothing I would wear that night. I raised myself on one elbow and unfolded the
letter, smoothing it in the light of the candle that stood on the table near
the bed. When I saw the contents I chuckled. I could read this, absolutely—the
paper contained a series of drawings. St. Paul’s cathedral was unmistakably
rendered, with its blocky tower, its spire lost to a fire some years past. Next
was a waxing quarter-moon and abroad-faced clock, its hand pointing to ten. An
earring pierced the page where the signature should be, a good-sized orient
pearl suspended from a sturdy gold hoop. My stomach lurched as I recognized it:
I had worn it the day I died.

I rose from the bed and let Jehan dress me. Nicolas had said
that Poley had been given the earring as his pay for watching the door as I was
murdered. Though I had been unable to discover his whereabouts, it looked as
though Poley had found me out. I frowned; little Robin was soon going to be one
very dead spy. The moon was waxing now, and the quarter would be in four nights
time. I idly wondered if the clock face meant ten in the morning? If so, Poley
would have a long wait. I slipped the thin silver hoop from my earlobe and set
the pearl in its place.

The night of the quarter-moon I dressed plainly in wool and
linen, armed myself with pistols as well as rapier and dagger, and set off for
St. Paul’s. I was glad of my vampire’s sight as I threaded my way in darkness
from the dock to the cathedral. It was just before ten when I took up a
position a little way away, among the shuttered stalls of the stationers, to
watch for Poley. I had not long to wait before a man with Poley’s furtive gait
passed me, the light of the link carried before him showing off his tarnished
finery. I stepped from the shadows and laid a hand upon his arm. He twitched
away, and I saw a stranger’s face grinning up at me. I became aware of someone
behind me at the same instant that something smashed into the back of my head.
There was a flash of light inside my skull, then only darkness.

I awoke lying on my back on a bare wooden bench or cot in the
center of a small room, and when I tried to sit up I realized that I was
fettered in such a way that movement was almost impossible. My arms were
stretched at right angles to my body and chained securely to either wall, my
feet caught at the foot of the cot, and a collar kept me from raising my head,
which throbbed painfully. I turned my head to look at the shackles, and my
stomach twisted. They were made of wood, reinforced with steel; someone knew
entirely too much about me.

The room was bare except for the narrow cot on which I lay, and
the pile in the corner that I recognized as my clothing and my weapons. I was
left in my shirt, breeches, and stockings. A pad had been thoughtfully placed
between my head and the bench beneath me, keeping contact with the wood from
exacerbating the wound. The wall at my feet was almost entirely made of glass,
and I supposed that the door was behind me. It was not long after I woke that I
heard a key turn in a heavy lock and someone entered. I struggled to see who
was behind me, but it was useless. The wood of my fetters galled me, blistering
my undead flesh when I pulled against it, and preventing me from exercising my
full strength. I stopped moving and waited. The man walked slowly around the
bed, stepping carefully over the taut chain, and held the candle up that I
might see him. My stomach knotted inside me as I recognized him:
Northumberland, the so-called Wizard Earl. His clothing stank of smoke.

“I trust you are comfortable, Master Marlowe?” he asked
tauntingly.

“Tolerably, given the situation, and my name is Kryštof. You may
call me ‘your highness’, or ‘your grace’. If ransom is your purpose, I’m afraid
you’ve chosen poorly. My brother is not very likely to spare much coin for me,”
I told him, assuming a composure that I was far from feeling.

“You must be wondering why you have been brought here,” the earl
continued, as if he hadn’t heard. “I have had some very interesting
conversations with an old friend and patron of yours, that served to spur my
own research,” he fell silent, but his cold eyes, the greasy grey-green of pond
ice, continued to roam my captive body. It seemed hours, but can really only
have been a few minutes before he recalled himself and turned to me. As he
moved I smelled the smoke again, and it recalled memories of nights at Ralegh’s
manor, Durham House, memories of the several futile attempts made to conjure
demons. There had been only one success claimed, though I had not seen it
myself, and that had been Northumberland’s endeavor. The earl moved to my side,
and I, looking at the window, shuddered. When the morning came . . . I tried to
jerk my head away as the earl leaned over me, but the collar bit into my
throat, choking me.” If you were not who I believe you to be, the jewel would
not have fetched you, and you would not have mistaken my groom for the one who
sold it to me. But who you are is of no consequence; it is what you are that
interests me, and that I know very well.” He stood smiling, gazing at the
windows.