Witch Hammer (12 page)

‘Step back,’ Faunt said, to those standing near him who were showing a lamentable tendency to gawp. ‘Give him air.’ He looked up at Marlowe. ‘You know him better than I, Kit, although he is right, poor wretch, we have met now and again. Is he fainting through fear? Is he hysterical?’

Marlowe thought back to Strange’s fall from his horse, his fear of the woman with no eyes and wondered whether this might be the reason for this faint now. But he thought not, on balance. ‘No, I think he is poisoned. Smell his breath.’

Faunt leaned forward. He wrinkled his nose. ‘Almonds?’ he said, looking the poet in the eye. ‘Can almonds poison a man?’

‘No,’ Marlowe said, ‘but I remember when I was a boy, a woman in Canterbury murdered her husband by grinding up cherry stones into his porridge. He took ill and died weeks later. She nursed him devotedly, of course, with nourishing food, which was killing him by inches. She was discovered when the maid finished up his last bowlful and fell ill almost at once. She didn’t die, but said that the porridge tasted of almonds, which of course weren’t in the recipe. Were almonds served tonight?’ He half rose from his crouching position near Strange’s head. ‘Is the cook here?’

‘The pastry cook is here,’ Boscastle said, giving the man a malicious little push in the small of the back. There was no love lost between these two at the best of times.

‘Well,’ Faunt said, unable to resist taking over the questioning. ‘Did any almonds go into the food tonight?’

The man shook his head.

‘Cherries?’

‘The cherry season is over, My Lord,’ the chef said, addressing his answers to Sir William Clopton, out of habit. ‘We have some bottled, but we take out the stones and anyway, we didn’t serve them tonight.’

Around the table, people stood aghast, holding their stomachs in readiness for the onset of poison, but none came. Then, the mutter began and soon swelled across the room. It was the poppet which had felled Lord Strange. No one knew how, but it had done its dreadful work. Here and there the voice of reason was raised, that the poppet had a thorn through its breast and Lord Strange was not stabbed. That it was stupid superstition. But the story grew and took hold and was growing in certainty even as Marlowe and Faunt lifted Ferdinando Strange to his feet and half walked, half dragged him from the room and up the stairs to his bedchamber.

Ned Sledd didn’t like the way the evening was going. He particularly didn’t like the expression on William Clopton’s face. The old man was clearly terrified.

‘The show must go on, though, surely,’ he said.

Clopton stopped in his march from the solar. ‘Are you mad?’ he whispered. ‘Finish it. Now. Give them their money back. I want everybody out of my house.’

Joyce was at his elbow, trying to pour oil on troubled waters. ‘Father, people have travelled for miles . . .’

He spun to face her, eyes wild and staring. ‘Ferdinando is lying in there –’ he flung his arm behind him in general approximation of where the bedchamber was – ‘and for all I know he’ll be dead by morning. There will be no masque.’ He glanced down and realized he was still wearing his costume of feathers and spangles over his doublet. He tore it away and carried on walking.

‘At least,’ Joyce called after him and he turned. ‘At least . . .’ She closed to the old man and leant her forehead against his shoulder and spoke softly so he had to bend to hear. It brought back the intimacies of her childhood and he became more disposed to listen. Joyce was a clever daughter. ‘Let those who have come a long way stay tonight. Tomorrow is soon enough for them to go.’

Clopton hesitated, then turned his head and kissed his daughter’s ear. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘First thing in the morning.’

In the same clusters as they had arrived at Clopton Hall, so they left, the ones that had come on foot being the first to leave. Most of the groundlings hadn’t seen or even known for certain what had happened. And that made it worse. They handed in their vizards at the gate as Boscastle’s people saw them all out.

‘I’ve always said it,’ one of them commented ruefully, ‘the Devil is loose at Clopton.’

‘I’ve never seen anything like it.’

‘There’s a curse on the Stanleys, that’s well known.’

‘What about the rest of us?’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Well, it was the food, obviously. My money’s on the fish. Not natural. Here we are as far from the sea as you can get and they serve us codfish. Don’t tell me they served it with that much nutmeg except to hide the taste. It was off, mark my words. Not natural.’

And so it went. The great and the good of the Stratford groundlings robbed of their St George, their Guy of Warwick and their Britannia. There had been rumours that Lady Godiva herself would ride bareback in every sense of the word through the Clopton courtyard, but as soon as they realized that she would be played by some boy, as like as not, most of them lost heart. Only one or two had still been interested.

In the solar, as the lights burned blue and the candle flames guttered in the wind rising from the west, Kit Marlowe sat with Will Shaxsper on either side of an empty grate. The household had officially retired for the night, in that Sir William had gone to bed leaving strict instructions that he should be woken in the event of any change in Lord Strange’s condition.

Marlowe held the poppet in his hand, staring at it.

‘Must you do that?’ Shaxsper asked him.

Marlowe looked up. ‘Afraid of dolls, Master Glover?’

Shaxsper shook his head. ‘I’ve seen this before,’ he said softly. ‘No good will come of it. Put it down, Master Marlowe.’

‘That’s not a bad idea,’ a voice boomed from the darkness and a man appeared, dressed for the road.

Marlowe was on his feet, hand on his dagger hilt, in one movement. Although he hid it better, he was as jumpy as the rest. ‘Who are you?’ he demanded.

‘Forgive me for the interruption,’ the traveller said. ‘I just had to see that . . . thing . . . for myself. May I?’ and he held out his hand.

Marlowe passed the rough doll to him and waited.

‘I am Reginald Scot,’ he said, ‘and I have some knowledge of these things.’

Now Shaxsper was on his feet. ‘Don’t let him touch it, Kit,’ he hissed. ‘Get it back.’

‘Kit?’ Scot looked up at the taller, darker man and smiled. ‘Would that be Kit with the Canstick?’ he asked.

Shaxsper gasped. ‘Tom Tumbler,’ he said, and he crossed himself. ‘Boneless . . .’

‘And the Spoorne,’ Scot went on, still smiling, ‘the Mare, the Man in the Oak. Not forgetting the Puckle, the Firedrake, Hob Gobblin . . . oh, and Robin Goodfellow, of course.’

Shaxsper had turned quite pale. ‘Who are you?’ he whispered.

‘I told you,’ Scot said.

‘No, no.’ Shaxsper shook his head. ‘
What
are you?’

Scot threw the rag doll on to the table and crossed to the fireplace. He pointed to a ewer and said ‘What does a man have to do to get a drink around here?’

Shaxsper seemed frozen, rooted to the spot but Marlowe did the honours. Scot wafted the wine under his nose.

‘Checking for poison, Master Scot?’ Marlowe asked.

‘Ah,’ Scot said, wagging a finger at him, ‘the first sensible thing I’ve heard all night. Tell me, Kit with the Canstick, are you by any chance a university man?’

‘I am.’ Marlowe nodded. ‘Cambridge.’

Scot beamed. ‘Oh, bad luck. Oxford. Hart Hall.’

‘Corpus Christi, and the name is Marlowe, not Canstick. Just for the record. Although some have called me a demon.’

Scot chuckled and sipped his wine. ‘You’re the playwright,’ he said, ‘with Lord Strange’s Men.’

Marlowe nodded.

‘And you, sir?’ The hop grower looked at Shaxsper.

‘I’m a playwright, too,’ he said.

Marlowe smiled and poured more wine all round.

‘Really?’ Scot frowned. ‘How unlikely. You have the air of a burgher, sir. And local, by your accent. Here without your wife and children, I imagine.’

Shaxsper was on his feet, his quick temper, already simmering, come suddenly to the boil. ‘Have you been following me, sir?’ he shouted in Scot’s face. ‘Someone is at my back, I feel it. Is it you?’

Scot stepped back a pace and put a calming hand on Shaxsper’s chest. ‘I follow no one who is not up to no good,’ he said. ‘I assumed the wife, Master . . . Glover, is it?’ He cast a questioning glance at Marlowe.

‘The name’s Shaxsper,’ the Stratford man shouted.

‘Ah.’ Scot looked knowing and stepped back another pace. ‘You are travelling incognito. A wise move for a man running away from home.’

Shaxsper looked as though he would explode. ‘I’m not running away from anything or anyone,’ he bawled. ‘I . . .’ He suddenly seemed to run out of steam and collapsed back in his chair, all passion spent. ‘I am a glover by trade. I have a wife and three children. I come from Stratford but . . .’ He looked up at Scot with his slightly popping and divergent eyes. ‘I need to at least try to be a playwright. I need to go to London, just to find out if I am any good.’ He looked down at the floor despondently.

Scot clapped him on the back in a cheery fashion. ‘And are you any good, Master Shaxsper?’ He looked at Marlowe as he spoke, who shook his head just twice and made a rueful mouth.

Shaxsper shrugged.

‘I am a little curious,’ Marlowe said, to break the mood. ‘How did you know about the three children?’

‘I didn’t know it was three,’ Scot admitted. ‘But there is a shiny line on Master Shaxsper’s breeches about so high –’ he gestured with a downturned palm – ‘from the ground, the height of a two or three year old child’s nose. I know when my own Elizabeth was small, I bore such a badge of honour. Then, on your shoulder, another well-cleaned patch, where a baby might posset its milk after a feed. I confess I never had such a mark, leaving such moments to the wet nurse and my wife, but times have changed since then, perhaps. You are one of the new breed of men, Master Shaxsper, perhaps, who care more for their children.’

‘Twins,’ muttered Shaxsper to the floor. ‘A lot of work, twins.’

‘Well.’ Scot spread his hands and looked at Marlowe modestly. ‘I was right, but perhaps only be accident.’

Marlowe looked impressed. ‘I am very impressed, Master Scot,’ he said. ‘I am an observant man myself, but had not noticed the marks on Master Shaxsper’s clothing, except to wonder why he looked so . . . so . . .’

‘Even so,’ Scot said, and with a deprecatory cough continued with the conversation as though Shaxsper’s outburst had never happened. ‘Do I detect a hint of Kent in your voice, Master Marlowe?’

‘Canterbury.’ Marlowe smiled. ‘And call me Kit, Master Scot, do. But without the canstick, if you don’t mind. And your accent needs no magic to identify it. Maidstone, at a guess.’

‘Correct,’ Scot said, reaching out for the doll again, seeming drawn to it.

‘Look.’ Shaxsper had put up with this old boys’ act for as long as he could and the doll was making him feel very uneasy. ‘Just what the Hell is going on here?’

‘Ah, Hell,’ Scot said. ‘Very perceptive of you, Master Playwright. That’s exactly what you’re supposed to think.’

‘Whereas you think attempted murder,’ Marlowe said.

Scot did not answer. ‘May I see Lord Strange?’ he asked.

‘No,’ Marlowe told him. ‘Sir William has put an armed guard on his door.’

‘That’ll do no good,’ Shaxsper said. ‘The Devil knows no locks.’

Marlowe rested his back against the fireplace. ‘With charms I drive both sea and cloud,’ he said. ‘I make it calm and blow aloud. The viper’s jaws, the rocky stone, the force of earth congealed in one . . .’

Scot chimed in, ‘. . . I make the souls of men arise. I pull the moon out of the skies.’

Shaxsper was even more rattled now than he was before. ‘What’s that? Some spell?’

‘No, Will.’ Marlowe crossed to the man, his voice calm and kind. ‘It’s the Roman poet, Ovid. Fifteen hundred years ago he wrote of the power of witches.’ He looked into the Stratford man’s eyes. ‘It’s just a poem. It’s the sort of thing they don’t let university scholars read these days. I assume that’s true of Oxford, Master Scot?’

‘Sadly, yes. And that’s Reginald, by the way. Now, look, er . . . Will, is it?’

The glover-playwright nodded. If this man had forgotten his surname, all to the better. He didn’t like his knowledge, the way he scoffed at nature and at God.

‘The doll,’ Scot went on, ‘is the likeness of Lord Strange, I assume.’

Shaxsper nodded, and pointed vaguely to his forehead, his throat and finally his chest. The wicked thorn was still embedded in the doll in what was meant to be the location of the heart.

‘It’s just a toy,’ Scot said, ‘a piece of mysticism and nonsense, designed to frighten little children.’

‘As is Kit with the Canstick,’ said Marlowe, ‘and Boneless.’

‘And all the others,’ Scot continued. ‘Fustian. The sort of stuff you playwrights deal in.’

‘But . . . Robin Goodfellow, surely,’ Shaxsper said. ‘He’s real.’

‘Puck?’ Scot raised an eyebrow. ‘Spoiler of milk and scatterer of soot? He who can girdle the earth in forty minutes? Come on, Will. Where have you been living all your life?’

‘Here,’ Shaxsper shouted. ‘Right here in Stratford. And I’ve seen what the Devil can do. I want no more of it. I’ve a family. You can keep your plays, Kit. And Master Scot, your explanations. Lord Strange was as fit as a flea before he saw that poppet. And now Death waits in his chamber.’ He looked at them both, then snatched up his extra pair of gloves and his bundle of poetry tied with a bow and was gone.

Marlowe refilled Scot’s goblet.

‘Does he?’ Scot asked. ‘Does Death attend Lord Strange?’

‘I’m no doctor,’ Marlowe said. ‘Sir William sent for one hours since, but the local medical men are like Master Shaxsper. They come to heal the body but fear only for our souls.’

‘And you, Kit Marlowe.’ Scot looked at him steadily. ‘Do you not fear for yours?’

Marlowe smiled and answered, ‘If there was a Devil, I’d be afraid of him. If there was a God . . .’

Scot’s mouth opened but he said nothing and Marlowe turned away to look out of the window. In the silent courtyard below, the once-flaming torches were out now, wisps of smoke rising from them like ghosts in the near-dawn. Little, creeping winds blew the ribbons fluttering around Sledd’s stage and all that was left of the orchestra were abandoned chairs at rakish angles in the grass.