Witch Hammer (7 page)

Strange shook his head to the offer of more drink and shrugged. ‘More examples of Greville’s baseness, I suppose.’

‘No,’ said Marlowe, after a moment’s pause. ‘No, it’s not that simple.’

‘Well.’ Sledd quaffed the cup and left it on the trestle next to the jug. ‘I must be off. Some of us have props to attend to. If I leave it all to Nat Sawyer, we’ll be fencing with pig’s bladders on sticks in the Masque. His mind does tend to be rather narrow when it comes to acting. Goodnight, My Lord. Kit.’ He bowed to the one and nodded to the other and was gone.

Marlowe and Strange sat opposite each other with the great, grey carved stonework of the fireplace between them. ‘Sir William is of the old religion, isn’t he?’ the playwright said.

Strange stared at him, all the emotions of a generation hurtling through his brain. ‘Is he?’ He decided to smile as he brazened it out. ‘What makes you say that?’

Marlowe could not begin to explain that, until what seemed like yesterday, this was what he did for a living. He was not proud of it; in fact he hated it. But Francis Walsingham was the Queen’s spymaster. He had a nose for treason, for Papist intrigue. There were Jesuits abroad in the land, fanatical, black-robed priests pledged to snuff out the life of the English Jezebel. And Walsingham couldn’t have that. For every murderous priest on the road, there was a family to house him. A family like the Cloptons, with hidden rooms and secrets and the low, deadly chant of the Catholic Mass. When he had worked for Walsingham, Marlowe’s job had been to join such households himself, to expose their rabid idolatry, to save the Queen. That was what he told himself in the long, sad watches of the night – he was playing Judas to save the Queen. And it didn’t help one little bit. Because what he had suspected from the start had proved to be true; the evil plotters had turned out to be just people, trying to do what they thought best in an uncertain world. He had looked for the cloven hoof and the black heart and had found only human flesh that could bleed as readily as any other man’s. He forced a smile.

‘A lucky guess,’ he said. ‘But I
am
right, aren’t I?’

Strange looked at the man, with his dark, watchful eyes, the sensitive lips and the flowing hair. He had only known him for a few days and here he was, baring his soul in a situation in which men went to the flames. ‘Yes,’ he said, quietly. ‘Yes, Master Marlowe, you are right.’ Then, suddenly, Lord Strange remembered where he was and who he was. He sat up straight in his chair and then leaned forward, one hand in the small of his back. ‘But if you breathe a word of this, Marlowe, by God . . .’

The playwright held up his hand. ‘Sir,’ he said. ‘Sir William’s secret – and yours – is safe with me.’

Ferdinando Strange acknowledged the man’s sincerity with a brief inclination of his head. Then, as the sun sank to a magenta death in the west, the two sat, alone together with their thoughts.

‘R
ed sky at night, shepherd’s delight,’ the maid said, craning up on her toes to see out of the high window above the slop table in the kitchen of mighty Clopton Hall.

‘Red sky at night, hayrick’s alight, more likely,’ grated the old crone in the inglenook corner. ‘There’ll be rain before bedtime, I can guarantee it.’

‘No, Mistress Merriweather,’ the girl sang out. ‘It’s a beautiful evening.’

‘Puthery,’ the old woman remarked, shutting her toothless jaws with a snap.

The cook spun round, a short paring knife, worn to a half moon by sharpening, in her hand. ‘I have said it before and I’ll say it again, Mistress Merriweather,’ she said, sternly. ‘I will have none of that language in my kitchen.’

The woman in the chimney corner looked affronted. ‘It’s just a word to describe the weather,’ she said, in a wheedling tone. This was a comfortable place to be when the weather was closing in, when winter was nearer than you might think and the cook was generous. There was no bed on offer, but the settle in the corner was wide and accommodating and no one bothered her at night. Not worth annoying the woman; and anyway, it really was a word to describe the weather, that thick, soft feeling to the air, shot through with little shocks which foretold thunder and lightning to come.

The cook looked dubious, but after a busy evening conjuring up little sweetmeats for His Lordship and his guests and great pies and puddings for the players she was in that happy place inhabited by those who knew that a job had been well done. She wagged the knife at the woman. ‘Very possibly, Mistress Merriweather, but mind your tongue.’ She turned back to cleaning off her pastry board and so couldn’t read the old woman’s lips as she mouthed a foul oath at her broad back.

The maid was twirling now, her feet picking out complicated steps on the greasy flagstones. She was intoning, ‘Shepherd’s delight, shepherd’s delight,’ to herself, half song, half chant.

The cook clapped a floury hand to her forehead. ‘Dorothy, can you please stop spinning around like that? Mercy, girl, you’ll have me as giddy as a gander. I’m getting a mazy head.’

The girl carried on spinning round, but stopped singing. Instead, she moved her lips silently, but otherwise took no notice of the cook, who stood at her table, head bowed, hands braced on the butter and flour-daubed board. The old woman heaved herself up from her seat in the inglenook and tottered across to her and put a grimy claw on her shoulder.

‘Get off to your bed, Mistress,’ she crooned. Her voice, usually harsh as a corncrake was softer and persuasive. ‘I’ll finish cleaning your board off for you.’

The cook raised her head and winced with the pain. ‘I think I will, Mistress Merriweather. You know how to clean my pastry board? Scrub it down and rub it with rosemary to keep it sweet. Otherwise the butter goes rancid and taints the paste.’ She went a strange shade of green at the thought and, clapping her hand to her mouth, ran to the door. The girl and the crone could hear from the noises that something had definitely disagreed with the cook. After a few moments, they heard her dragging footsteps as she made her way to her truckle bed tucked under the back stairs. The kitchen was quiet for a moment, with only the settling embers of the cooking fire to be heard. The kitchen was usually loud with shouting pot boys and serving men, but their work was done for the night and they were all out at the wagons, mingling with Lord Strange’s Men – and women – with dreams of the stage and running away to a better life filling their heads.

The crone looked at the girl, who had started her solitary dance again. She had lived a long time, mostly on her wits, and had learned a lot in that long life. She had once had a name of her own, but her talent for predicting rain, snow and other conditions which could affect her fellow men and beasts had earned her a new one; Merriweather. She cocked her head on one side.

‘Stop that, now. You’ve done your work, now go outside and have some fun.’

The girl stopped spinning and looked at the old woman from under her brows. She was not a pretty girl at first glance, with a glowering look and hair which hung in elflocks round her face, but the crone could see that with a better expression and a ribbon, she could be quite a heartbreaker. There was a moment when the two glances met with an almost audible crackle, but the old woman had been around a long time and no chit of a girl could beat her. Yet. Then, the tension broke and the girl gave one last twirl.

‘You’re sure?’ she said, but she was already heading for the door, clapping her hands as if to rid them of any remaining flour.

‘Certain sure,’ the old woman said, with a toothless smile. ‘Off you go. Find yourself a nice young man to dance with. It’s not healthy to dance with yourself.’

With a glance over her shoulder, the girl was gone in a swirl of skirts and shawls and Mistress Merriweather was alone. A snatch of pipe and drum had come through the door with the girl’s exit and the forecaster gave a slow, arthritic turn of her own, one hand shaking on her hip and the other held curved above her head. She stopped and looked around with a sheepish smile to make sure no one had seen her, pulled her clothes into what passed, on her body, for tidiness, and then went back to her seat in the inglenook and her thoughts.

Outside, under the spread of a glorious chestnut tree, Lord Strange’s Men were taking their ease. Nat Sawyer was entertaining a couple of the village girls behind the tree, to an accompaniment of smothered giggles. There were tricks he could do with various parts of his body which the rest of the troupe preferred not to know about. A couple of the women had the details but could never bring themselves to talk about it. Thomas, still an innocent in many ways despite his best efforts, thought it might be something to do with being double jointed. Martin was making the most of Alleyn’s absence and had been last seen slipping away into the coppiced wood to the west of the estate with one of the more attractive household servants. Joseph was asleep in the arms of his favourite companion, alcohol, and Ned Sledd was playing his favourite role of actor-manager, standing legs akimbo like the old king and for much the same reason; it was a stance calculated to make lesser men quake and peers to step aside. A gaggle of impressionable youths surrounded him. He bowed, cleared his throat and stepped forward a pace.

‘Gentles, all,’ he began.

Thomas, sitting to one side mending the hem of his dress, groaned. Nothing good ever came of it when Sledd began that way.

‘Gentles, all,’ Sledd repeated, with a venomous glare at Thomas. ‘I give you a few lines from a play which I penned as a lad,
Rafe Roister Doister
.’ He bowed low to hide his grin; he loved these country places that had never heard of Nicholas Udall and all his works.

‘I thought Nicholas Udall wrote that,’ came a voice from the crowd.

Sledd straightened up, leaned back from the hips and boomed back, ‘Pen name, good sire. My pen name merely.’

‘I thought Nicholas Udall was dead,’ the voice continued. ‘And I thought he was done for buggery.’

Sledd shaded his eyes and looked into the crowd but could see no one in particular that he knew. Some trouble maker; there was one in every audience. He straightened again and struck his favourite stance, one leg held stiffly in front of him, one arm flung out, one hand on his heart. He dropped his chin on his chest and growled, ‘From
Rafe Roister Doister
. A snatch only, for your delight.’ He took a deep breath in through his nostrils and exhaled like a winded horse. ‘Where is the house I go to, before or behind? I know not where, or when, or how I shall it find?’ He took another whistling breath and changed arms.

Recognizing that his leader was about to forget the next line and not wishing to witness the sorry scene, Thomas rolled quietly off his stool and crept on hands and knees around the tree. Nat Sawyer and his audience looked at him with startled eyes and Thomas grew up several years in one second. He quickly turned away but with an unforgettable image burned forever into his brain.

Covered in confusion, he blundered off across the sheep-cropped grass, towards the coppiced wood, deciding on his destination as he went by veering away from the cries of obvious delight coming from behind a big elder clump. Looking over his shoulder, he missed his footing and went flying over an ivy-covered stump and lay there, face hidden in his arms, waiting until he felt steadier.

‘Are you hurt?’ A voice from above his head startled him, and he looked up slowly. At first, he could just see a pair of feet, bare and rather dirty, leading to slender ankles which in their turn disappeared under the frowsty hem of a skirt. Looking onwards and upwards, the next thing he saw was an apron, kirtled up into the waistband of the dress and above that a pair of swelling breasts under a hastily knotted shawl. Above that, a smiling face, not pretty, not clean, but friendly.

Thomas scrambled to his feet and dusted himself off. Something of his acting persona had rubbed off on him over the years, and he liked to look nice in company. Sometimes he had to hold himself in check to keep the girl within in her place. ‘No,’ he said, consciously trying to lower the timbre of his voice. ‘No, it was just a trip.’

Now he was on his feet, he could look the girl in the eye, but only just. She was tall and well made, with a body that looked almost as hard and boyish as his own. He found himself wishing he could make his breasts look as good as hers in a gown. She was still smiling, with her head on one side, making an elflock fall over one eye. She brushed it aside and tucked it behind one ear. ‘Are you with the actors?’

‘Mmm.’ Thomas decided that until he could get his voice a little lower, he would stay in the safety of mumbles. Perhaps she would think he was just too masculine to speak. It seemed to work for George, the stupidest of all the actors, who always played third spear-bearer and who had shoulders like linen presses and the intellect of one of the bed sheets within. He had a wife and six children back in London, so a grunt must have done the business at least that many times.

She stepped forward half a step and put her hand on his chest, rubbing just one finger tip up and down the laces of his jerkin. ‘That must be exciting,’ she said, huskily. ‘I’m a maid in the kitchen of the big house.’ She tossed her head in the direction of Clopton Hall. ‘It’s very . . . dull.’ Somehow, without Thomas being aware of how it had happened, her finger had pulled the laces loose and his jerkin flapped open. In another deft movement, she had pulled the shirt loose and her hand was now scratching at his chest. Somehow, his breathing seemed to be giving him trouble and he had to really concentrate on not passing out.

She smiled at him and her face seemed very near. He could smell the sweet pastry smell of her, like honey and warm butter. Her teeth gleamed in the half light and her eyes flashed. He tried to pull his head back. He had told everyone that it was just an old wives’ tale, all that about his balls and his voice and all, but when push came to shove, he didn’t dare risk it. But it seemed that her reach was longer than his and her mouth found his and he had no choice but to kiss her.

And such a kiss. He felt as though his brain was falling out through his mouth, to mingle with hers in a tangle of tongues and teeth. And then he felt the hand in his breeches and knew he should stop all this, before his voice was gone for ever. And then he felt her leg wrap around his and something warm envelop what he had tried not to think of too much lately, for fear. And he thought of Nat Sawyer, and he thought of Martin, and he thought of his career, such as it was. And the ground came up to meet them and he stopped thinking altogether.