Perfect Shadows (7 page)

“I wouldn’t expect
you
to understand it, but I have
responsibilities to my family. I must marry now, I must beget an heir and I
must not be involved in scandal. But then how could you understand? When have
you ever been responsible? When have you ever been anything but malicious?
Malicious, lascivious, and base! Base-born and base in nature!” His voice had
been rising steadily in volume and he screamed the final words.

“You’ve played that card too often, Tommy,” I said coldly. “It
doesn’t hurt anymore.” I lied; it still hurt, but I would be racked before
admitting it.

He leant towards me, resting his delicate hands on the table.
The harebell-blue of his eyes paled to treacherous ice and his voice dropped
into a menacing whisper. “You talk too freely and far too much, Kit. I will not
have you prating about us, do you understand? Court your own destruction if you
must, but do not think to drag me down with you. It never happened, never! I
was your patron, nothing more.”

Red mist swirled in my sight and I heard my words as if spoken
by another. “You! When were
you
ever anything but a boy? A petty,
pretty, spiteful, irresponsible boy! You, responsible to your family? Hah! That
would make a cat laugh! You could not wait to corrupt me, to add me to your
collection, but took me straight from your uncle’s office! Now, now, you come
to me,
boy
!
My
boy!” I beckoned and Tom shook his head, but he came
to me, step by unwilling step. I grasped his expensive bone-lace ruff in both
hands and twisted it, drawing him into a kiss while I choked him. I could taste
his tears; felt him fighting for breath, his feeble tugs at my relentless
hands. Still I held him, until he gave a little whimper deep in his throat, no
longer fighting the kiss, no longer fighting me, and then I released him,
shoving him away from me. He stumbled back against the wall, pawing at his
throat. I became aware of a pounding on the door and voices. Numbly I went to
open it, turning back at the threshold to look at Tom.

“I came here to try to mend our differences—what a hope! It is
you that never cared, always relying on someone else to do your dirty work for
you. You could not so much as tell me honestly that it was over, you must needs
force a new quarrel, goad me into a fury, to make the fault mine,” I said with
dull disgust and unbolted the door. It flew violently open and barely missed
striking me. I staggered back as Frizer thundered into the room and grabbed me
by the arm.

“The villain has hurt you, Master,” he bellowed. I drew my
dagger and he unhanded me with a speed that was almost comical. Though the mark
of the slap was clearly visible on his fair skin and his ruff a ruin at his
bruised throat, Tom shook his head. “No, no. He was just leaving. Let him go,”
he said hoarsely.

“Well, no, I think not,” Frizer gloated. “Someone has come for
him.”

A nondescript and soberly dressed stranger entered as I leant
close to Frizer. “I was dissuaded from cutting your throat not so long ago,
Ingram,” I hissed, my words low-pitched but perfectly audible. “Be sure that I
will not be so cheated again.” Frizer glared at me with mixed hatred and
exultation as the stranger stood forward.

“Christopher Marlowe?” I stepped forward. “I arrest you in the
Queen’s name,” he said.

There was a gasp from Tom and the room seemed to fade before my
eyes. My thoughts filled with images of my stay in Newgate Prison a few years
before; the stinking rooms, the galling weight of the manacles on my wrists,
the unnatural, halting steps produced by the leg-irons. I stalked up to Tom who
quailed back against the wall. “I’ll not go back to prison, Tom. See to it,” I
told him, and turned my back on his mumbled retort. “And you are?” I asked the
man who had arrested me.

“Henry Maunder,” was the terse reply.

“The charge?” Tom asked, his voice shrill with alarm.

“Blasphemy, sir,” Maunder responded tonelessly. I nodded—I had
guessed.” I am ready,” I said.

“Master Maunder?” Frizer’s tone was one of command. “If you
would be so kind as to delay your departure a short while, I have a letter to
deliver for my master.” He ignored the man’s protests, turning to Tom. “Yes,
yes, please wait,” Tom agreed, weakly. As I left the chamber Frizer was
speaking quietly to Tom, and eyeing the ruin of his linen.

By virtue of my university degrees I was a gentleman, even if a
somewhat disreputable one. Master Maunder requested my sword, but left me my
poniard. Nor was I yet in irons, being taken as I was from the house of a
powerful protector who might take exception to the practice. Irons, irony—I
grinned humorlessly. Tom was my protector no longer, and might indeed have
relished the sight of me dragged off in chains if Maunder had but known it.

It was a full hour later before Frizer joined us, and we were
able to start for the City. The day was overcast and threatening rain, for
which I was grateful, as sunlight had recently been causing me savage
headaches. We had not been riding long when Frizer pulled his horse up beside
mine and began to chatter.

“They arrested poor Kyd, you know. Found heretical papers in his
chamber. Good friend he was to you though:  they had to rack him before he
told them the papers were yours. Have you ever seen anybody racked? Sometimes
the arms dislocate first and sometimes the stomach muscles tear loose. The
gaolers bet on which it’ll be. And sometimes, when you’re stretched that tight,
they’ll bounce coins on your belly. Just the weight of one coin can do it,
sometimes, rip you near in two.” I had a sudden, sickening vision of myself
broken and crippled, begging for my bread, my numbed and nerveless hands unable
to hold a pen. Poor Kyd! I felt the color drain from my face as he continued;
triumph and venom spurting from him like arterial blood. “Of course, it’ll not
stop there; if they can prove you an atheist or heretic, it’s the stake for
you! They tie you up and roast you alive for all to see and I’d make sure it’s
a slow fire and no mercy shown, when it’s your turn. Strangling would be too
quick for the likes of you.” I suppressed a shudder as the relentless voice
went on.

“Now if you’re found a traitor, that’s another thing altogether.
You being a commoner, there’ll be no gentle axe for you, lad. No, you they’ll
take to Tyburn and hang. You know the rest well enough, I warrant! Before
you’re dead, you’re cut down, your cock and ballocks gets sliced off, and I’ll
be bribing the hangman for yours, as a keepsake for Master Thomas! Then they
gut you, but you’re not dead yet—you get to watch them burn your living guts
before your face. Oh, it can go on for hours with a man as knows his work, and
say what they will about yon Master Topcliffe, there’s none assays he slacks
his work! Then they cut you into quarters and take your head for a pole on
London—”

“Enough!” Maunder must have observed the greensick expression on
my face, and moving in to investigate, heard the last of Frizer’s harangue.
“Now either hold your spiteful tongue or be off with you!” To my immense relief
Frizer glared for a moment then galloped off, his malevolent laugh floating
back to us.

“And you, Master Marlowe, you can put that blade away, or I’ll
be obliged to ask you for it.” I glanced in wonder at the dagger in my hand,
which I did not recall drawing, and then to my jailer.

“I do thank you,” I said, in a voice as shaky as my smile.
Maunder shook his head.

“Do not think on it, man. Belike it’s nothing at all.” If only I
could believe that, I thought, but much to my surprise, Maunder had the right
of it. The next morning I presented myself before the Council, answered a few
questions about the papers, a part of a treatise on Arianism I’d been using for
research, and they let me go, extracting my compliance to appear before them
early each morning. I readily agreed, although it meant lingering in a city
that daily grew more plague-ridden.

Henry Percy, the Earl of Northumberland looked up impatiently at
the interruption, but composed his features at the sight of his visitor. “You
have news for me, Master Poley?” he asked, motioning the spy to take a stool
near the table.

“I have, my lord,” Poley said, looking
expectant.

“News first,” Northumberland replied shortly and Poley shrugged.

“It’s arranged. Marlowe dies at the end of the week. He’ll
expect to meet with Walsingham in Deptford, but his host will be a somewhat
grimmer one,” Poley grinned, and outlined the scheme. Northumberland nodded,
then took a small bottle from a casket on the table before him.

“You may need this,” he told the spy. “It is a mixture of
manicon and poppy—put it in his wine if his head for drink turns out stronger
than you suppose. And here is your pay,” he added, dropping a fat pouch beside
the bottle. It chinked comfortingly. Poley shook his head, but took the poison
and the pouch and made his exit.

Northumberland stood and began to pace. This would be the test,
then. If the rash and improvident poet had been changed by his association with
the ones Doctor Montague named as vampire, and he did meet his end there in
Deptford, he would rise up from his grave like Lazarus, and he, Percy, would at
last have immortality within his grasp.

The older vampires would be far too hard to catch, to use so and
then be rid of, but Kit, wild, headstrong and impetuous Kit, would be easier
meat. Always supposing of course that the victim did not smell a trap in
Deptford and so delay his dying day. Not likely, Percy thought, not at all
likely, and he began to lay his plans.

Not many days after my first appearance before the council I
received a letter from Tom asking me in the friendliest terms for a meeting. He
had heard of my restriction and suggested a lodging house in Deptford as a
convenient meeting place, so I had promised to meet him on the thirtieth of May
at Eleanor Bull’s public house in Deptford.

I arrived just before ten that morning and was shown to a
private room. It contained a table and chairs, a small cot against one wall and
had a private entrance to the gardens. A jug of wine rested on the table, and I
was left alone to await my host. Before long the door opened, but the man that
stepped through was not Tom.

“Good morrow, Kit,” Robin Poley said. “I happened to be at
Scadbury and Tom asked me to tell you that he will be a little delayed. I told
him I would keep you glad company until he comes,” he added, pouring the wine.
For a while we talked of “the old days”, as Poley called them, and he kept my
cup filled. When the jug was empty he went to fetch another and so the time
passed until about two, when I, feeling the wine, went to walk in the garden to
try to clear my head. Since Tom could not be bothered to come by this time, I
considered riding the few miles on to Blackavar, but the dazzling sunlight had
induced another of the raging headaches I was lately subject to. I went back to
the room and stretched out on the hard, narrow cot. It was so placed that if I
lay with my head to its head, I trapped my left arm, my sword arm, against the
wall. I unbuckled my sword and placed my head at the cot’s foot, leaving my
blade within easy reach.

“Ah, Kit, you don’t trust me?” Poley asked.

“No, I don’t,” I replied shortly, and settled to sleep off the
effects of the wine. After a time I became aware of low voices in the room, but
could make but little sense of what I heard.

“—it took manicon and poppy in that last jug; the brandywine had
scarce any effect at all—”

“—so I’ll serve him as he threatened to serve me. I’ll cut his
throat!”

“—like an accident! Say he pulled your dagger from behind, like
he did mine last winter and you was defendin’ yourself—”

I recognized the voice of Ingram Frizer, and knew that I was
lost; it was my own murder I was hearing plotted. The other newcomer was
Nicholas Skeres. I fumbled for my steel, but it was gone. I tried to throw
myself from the bed but my drugged body would not respond and I thrashed
wildly. Skeres, with an oath, leapt towards the cot, catching up the heavy
wooden flagon from the table and striking me a vicious blow to the top of the
head, knocking me stunned to the floor; I had heard rather than felt the bones
of my skull crack. I was still conscious but unable to move, then Skeres was on
me. He placed a knee on my chest, pinning me down and binding my weakly
twitching arms to the floor in an iron grip. I turned my head and saw Poley, my
sword clutched to his chest, gazing at me in disbelief. “You should have heeded
my warning, Kit,” he whispered. I turned a little more and shuddered at the
obscene glee on Frizer’s usually solemn face.

“Go and watch at the door,” Frizer snapped at Poley, then
sauntered over tome, slipping his dagger from its sheath. “See this, Kit, my
pretty lad? I bought this special, just for you. Cost me twelve pennies, it
did, and worth every one of ’em. Oh yes indeed.”  Frizer’s words,
half-heard the day I was taken from Scadbury, echoed in my mind, suddenly
clear: “Two may keep a secret if one of them is dead.” I tried to laugh, but
all that came out was a muffled groan. True, I had not expected to live to grow
old, but I had never thought that death could come for me so very soon, nor yet
take me so very easily.

“Why?” The word was almost unrecognizable, but Frizer pounced on
it.