Silent Court (12 page)

As the caravanserai made its slow way to Ely, Marlowe was increasingly glad of his oatmeal breakfast. As a scholar on short commons, he had often gone without the odd meal, but his midday luncheon was the one he tried never to go without. His head was hungry, even though his stomach had only nibbled at the sides of the solid mass inside. He clicked his tongue to the Wasp and went back to the head of the column.

‘Hern?’ he said, ‘are we to stop for luncheon today?’

Hern looked at him askance. ‘Luncheon, Master Marlowe?’ he said, in a mocking, cultured tone. ‘What would Egyptians on the road have to do with luncheon? If your oatmeal is not still satisfying you, go back to the women. They may have an apple or two to share, or a slice of cold oatmeal if you still have an appetite for it. But you’ll have to get used to eating when there is food, not just because of the position of the sun in the sky.’

Marlowe looked up at the unending low grey sky, with not even a faint white glow to tell where the sun might be. ‘It’s my guts which tell me it’s time for luncheon,’ he said plaintively. ‘How do you know where the sun is on such a day?’

‘We all know where the sun is,’ Balthasar said, coming alongside him with his usually unerring timing. How could a horse walk so quietly, Marlowe wondered. He himself was known to be flannel-footed, but his horses made the same noise as anyone else’s. ‘Even the children could tell you the position of the sun, and at night, they can tell the time by the moon, even when there is no moon to see.’

‘How is that possible?’ Marlowe said.

‘No trick,’ Balthasar said. ‘I will tell you one of our secrets if you like.’

Hern looked at him with flinty eyes, as grey as his hair and beard. ‘Be careful, Balthasar,’ he said. ‘We have not known Master Marlowe long.’

‘I know Master Marlowe as well as he knows himself,’ the soothsayer said, ‘but this secret is one that any man could know if he thought for a moment about it.’ He turned to Marlowe. ‘Imagine the moon at the full,’ he said. ‘Come on, now, Master Marlowe. Let me see you imagining. Close your inner eyes and see the sky at night. Choose a good frosty one, so that you can see the stars clearly.’ He watched as Marlowe’s eyes moved from side to side, seeing the picture in his mind’s eye, high above the rickety roofs of Canterbury or the turreted splendour of Cambridge. ‘Can you see the moon?’

Marlowe found his arm lifting involuntarily an inch or two, to point to the imaginary world above his head.

‘You are a good subject, Master Marlowe,’ Hern observed. ‘If I can give you some advice, don’t let Balthasar speak quietly to you in the dark. Before you know it you will be telling him all your secrets and you won’t even know you have done it. Beware!’

Balthasar laughed softly and patted Marlowe’s arm. ‘You have nothing to fear from me, Kit,’ he said. ‘We all have secrets here and which of us would want them shared around? So… can you see the moon?’

Marlowe nodded his head. He was ‘Kit’ now or was this all part of the soothsayer’s guile?

‘Now, still looking at the moon, but keeping the stars in view, wipe out the moon’s face. Start from the middle or the edge, it doesn’t matter, but imagine a cloth wiping out the moon.’ He waited a few heartbeats. ‘Is it gone?’

Marlowe nodded again.

‘So,’ Balthasar said, leaning back in his saddle, ‘what is there to see where the moon once was?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Good. Now, let your eyes wander across the sky. Can you see any other patches of nothing of that size? Use your eyes. Don’t just see the twinkling stars, but look and see the stardust too. Can you see another dark patch that size?’

Marlowe’s eyes wandered about again, raking the celestial landscape in his head and eventually he shook his head.

Balthasar shook his bridle, setting the bells jingling and the ribbons flying. ‘So, on a moonless night, look for the moon, Kit, and you will never be lost, not for place or time.’

Marlowe smiled slowly. ‘That is so obvious, I don’t know why I didn’t know that already,’ he said.

‘You did, once,’ Hern said, as Balthasar rode back down the column again, checking, always checking. ‘We children of the moon remember things we knew at our birth. The rest of the world begins to forget as they draw their first breath. We begin to remember.’ He looked slyly at Marlowe. ‘Has Balthasar’s lesson made you less hungry, Master Marlowe?’

Marlowe listened to his stomach, which said he was full and then to his head, which said it was definitely time for luncheon. ‘Not less hungry, Hern,’ he said, ‘but it may be that I am learning not to be.’

‘Then you must remember today as your first step to being a child of the moon.’ Hern laughed. He reached behind him and foraged in the dark wagon. When he pulled his arm free, there was a child on the end of it. ‘Here,’ he said to Marlowe, ‘take –’ he twisted the child round and looked into its face – ‘Lukas here and tell him some stories. He might tell you some in return; we have hopes of him as a storyteller when he is older.’ He stood the child, who was somewhere around six years old, on the edge of the seat and gave him a push in the small of his back. The child leapt across Marlowe’s saddle and snuggled back against his chest.

‘Tell me a story, Master Marlowe,’ he said, lisping badly.

‘What about?’ Marlowe asked, glad that the boy was facing forward and so only the Wasp was catching the spray. ‘Do you have a favourite animal?’

‘I like to listen to stories of squirrels,’ Lukas said.

As long as he didn’t tell too many on the subject, Marlowe thought, or whole audiences may well drown before he got to the end. ‘Once upon a time,’ he began, ‘there was a squirrel, the bravest squirrel in all Christendom…’

Hern smiled as the two fell back in the column. He liked to know where Master Marlowe was at all times. It took a trickster to spot a trickster, and behind the face of that handsome boy was an adversary worthy of the Egyptians. This journey might turn out to be their greatest show yet. He clicked to the horses. They ignored him. Egyptian horses on the move had but one speed and he would have been amazed if there had been any change of pace. But he did it every now and again for the look of the thing.

Slowly, into the gathering dark, the ragged crew made its way along the road from Ely as it led through the Fens, across the watery waste of Soham Mere. Although the dusk and mist prevented anyone seeing far on either side, the feeling of enormous, silent space was unnerving, especially to a man who was used to the closes and alleys of Cambridge and Canterbury. Marlowe could feel the ghosts of the past gathering at his back and he was grateful for the sleeping warmth of Lukas, still astride the pommel of his saddle, finally sated on stories of squirrels in every guise; soldier, lover, swordsman, sailor, explorer and fop. The child, with his musky, unwashed smell and small jumps and twitches of his sleep was a reassuring taste of humanity. When Marlowe had encountered John Dee the last time, his feet were firmly on the ground and still he found the old magus deeply unsettling. Now that a few of his ropes had been untethered and the everyday world had retired behind a veil of the Egyptians’ weaving, he was not sure how Dee and his peculiar ménage might appear.

At the back of the row of wagons and horses, lost in his own thoughts, Marlowe didn’t notice that Hern had taken a right turn with his lead wagon and had disappeared into the tree-hung gloom of a small orchard inside an elegant but slightly tumbledown archway in the wall along which they had been riding for some while. Marlowe did a hasty adjustment to his course and was grateful that whatever Hern had said to her, the Wasp had taken to heart. On another day a rapid about turn such as that would have made her bolt for her life. Ahead, on a small man-made rise, was a manor house, its ancient stones grey and unyielding across the Level winds. It had the ornate roof gables of the Flemish influence that had reached this far west in the days of the Staple when the Lord Chancellor of England first placed his feet on the wool sack.

As they rode in between the two encircling wings, the big door in the centre was flung open and John Dee came flying out, with his cloak swirling and his dark cap seeming to glow with esoteric figures on his head. Behind him came Helene, if anything more beautiful than before, Sam Bowes and the cook, carrying the inevitable smell of toast which lingered about her always. This was a magnet for the children and soon they were clustering around her, trying to understand why a woman so relentlessly homely could smell so nice.

‘Don’t be a bother, children!’ Hern called. ‘My apologies for the behaviour of my brood, madam. They are tired and hungry from hours on the road.’

The cook got all flustered. Egyptians they may be, but children were children wherever they came from and the man who led them was certainly rather attractive, in a half-magical sort of way; and the cook was used to half-magical. Whatever she had been expecting, it wasn’t this. She sketched a curtsey, taking everyone, including herself by surprise. ‘May I take them into the kitchen, sir?’ she asked. ‘I could give them something to eat.’

‘By all means,’ Dee said, flapping his hand at her. Kitchens and children were far from his mind just now. He was the only one in the courtyard who did not seem to realize that the cook had been addressing Hern.

The cook went back into the house, looking like a galleon in full sail surrounded by tiny pinnaces. The total noise in the echoing space was immediately reduced and everyone could hear themselves speak. Marlowe kept himself to the back of the line and watched as the others were introduced to Dee. Looking beyond Helene’s beautiful head, he thought he could see someone else lurking in the candlelight from the porch. It was difficult to focus on, now here, now gone and it was even difficult to identify its size, age or gender. No sooner did he have it in his sights but with one blink it was gone. Balthasar’s voice sounded in his ear.

‘I see that you have spotted Master Kelly,’ he said.

‘To be honest with you, Balthasar,’ he said, ‘I’m not sure who or what I have spotted.’

‘No,’ Balthasar said. ‘It is not an illusion. It is Edward Kelly as I live and breathe. Our paths have crossed now and then, but I would be happy if I never saw that particular gentleman again, and certainly not here. He used to be Dee’s partner, in business if not in crime, and when the good doctor dispensed with his services, it was a happy day for him, I’m sure. But let’s not let him skulk back in the shadows.’ Raising his voice, he called across the courtyard, ‘Master Kelly. Come out and meet my friends, new since we met last. Come forward, come forward.’

Out of the dark corners of the porch stepped an ill-favoured man with cropped dark hair and the clipped ears of a rogue. Marlowe had heard of Kelly, but only in passing in Dee’s house, as one might speak of an invasion of mice or fleas, now departed. He seemed to sidle rather than walk and the general impression was of someone walking down a corridor lit fitfully by tallow candles; neither definitely there, nor definitely not. Marlowe found that his features were not easy to remember when he was not actually looking at his face and knew that here was a man who, like himself, made a living on the edge. But, unlike him, this man had taken the road of disappearance and disguise, rather than Marlowe’s trick of hiding in plain sight.

‘Balthasar,’ he called, as though greeting a long-lost brother.

‘Edward,’ Balthasar said, reaching forward and pulling him towards Marlowe, ‘please don’t fear that I am going by another name these days. Balthasar Gerard is and always has been good enough for me. May I introduce you to a new friend of mine, Kit. Kit, Edward Kelly, who is…’ he paused and turned his penetrating smile on Kelly. ‘Edward, I fear I don’t know what you are these days.’

Kelly waved an insouciant hand in the air. ‘I do some of this, Balthasar, some of that. As ever.’

‘So there you are, Kit,’ Balthasar said, thwacking Kelly heartily on the back, ‘Master Kelly is a some of this and some of that, so now we know. But, Edward, please enlighten me. Is the beautiful woman yonder the reason for your return to Dr Dee’s fireside?’

Kelly spoke sulkily, but Marlowe could tell that when he wanted to, the crust could be covered with honey. ‘She is Dee’s wife,’ he said to Balthasar, ‘and for some reason loyal to him. But I see you have a beauty of your own, albeit a little…’ he swept his finger in a circle round one eye.

Balthasar dropped his voice to a growl. ‘Rose is also not for you, Kelly,’ he said. ‘The eye will heal and when it, and her heart and her head have healed as well, possibly then…’ he turned his head to watch as Rose stood with the women, trying to blend in and yet standing out like a diamond in oatmeal, like a petal in a box of coal.

‘Another of your rescues, eh, Balthasar?’ Kelly said, but his eyes were hungry as they looked in Rose’s direction. Then, with a blink, he turned his attention on Marlowe. The poet felt as if he was being examined with a lens. ‘And what do you do, young Kit?’ Kelly asked. ‘And do you have another name, to go with Kit?’

‘No.’ Helene Dee was suddenly at Marlowe’s side, squeezing his elbow. ‘No one has names here, Ned, not for you. You have just one night here, don’t forget. And now that dear Kit is here, there will be no bed for you. You can sleep in the kitchen, with the dogs. You’ll be nice and warm there, and in good company.’

Still holding his elbow in a vice-like grip, she led him away from the two men, towards the house. ‘Kit,’ she said in his ear, ‘excuse me for my familiarity, but you should not let Kelly know what your other name is; he finds things out, uses them against people. What are you doing with these ragamuffins, anyway? I understood you had returned to your studies.’

‘My studies and I are occasionally in correspondence,’ Marlowe told her, ‘but just now I have a fancy to a roving life with the Egyptians.’

‘Well,’ she said, looking him up and down and fingering the leather of his jacket appreciatively, ‘whatever you are doing seems to suit you well. Here we are, our home for now. What do you think?’

‘Nothing will ever be like Mortlake,’ Marlowe said, looking round at the towering Hall with its Gothic beams and Flemish tapestries. They depicted the Trojan War, if he knew his Homer. And Kit Marlowe did know his Homer. ‘I dream of it still.’