Strange Devices of the Sun and Moon (33 page)

Through it all he knew that he was dreaming, and he struggled to come awake. “Short, tall,” the voice said. “Big, small. False, true—old, new.”

The voice seemed to speak to him for hours, tireless. Finally, near dawn, he awoke. An idea had grown in his mind while he slept, planted by something the voice had said. He dressed quickly and went out to find Tom Kyd.

Kyd was not in the room he and Marlowe had once shared. The place had apparently been rented to someone else, a man adding up columns of numbers who demanded to know what he meant by this interruption. Nashe closed the door on him and hurried toward Kyd's lodgings, his suspicions hardening into certainty as he ran.

He took the stairs to Kyd's room two steps at a time. “Tom!” he said, pounding on the door. “Tom, listen. Kit was murdered—I know it!”

Kyd opened the door. Nashe made as if to go past him, into the room, but Kyd blocked the way. “Listen,” Nashe said, breathing hard. “He was murdered—Kit was murdered. Listen to this.”

Kyd moved aside reluctantly. Now Nashe noticed that Kyd looked ill, as if something had broken within him at Bridewell. He shuddered to think what they must have done to him there. As he went inside he saw a candle on the desk flicker and go out. Piles of paper were heaped around the candlestick, all of them covered with Kyd's fine spidery writing. The man must have been up for hours. “What do you want?” Kyd asked.

“Listen to this. Here,” Nashe said. He took the quill from the desk and handed it to Kyd. “Hold this. Pretend it's the dagger. You're holding it in your right hand, and if someone bent it backwards it would go into your right eye. Like this.” He twisted Kyd's wrist, a little too violently, and the other man cried out. Nashe let go. “But Kit is—was left-handed. If he held the dagger in his left hand, like this”—Nashe held the quill himself this time—“it would have gone into his left eye. Do you see?”

Kyd said nothing. “Do you see?” Nashe said again, nearly frantic to make the other man understand.

“Aye,” Kyd said. “What of it?”

“What of it?” Nashe asked, incredulous. “Someone's lying. Someone murdered him and made it look like a quarrel. We've got to tell the authorities—”

“Why?”

“To bring his murderer to justice. He was your friend too, wasn't he?” Kyd did not reply. “Wasn't he?”

“He was no friend of mine,” Kyd said coldly.

Something on the desk caught Nashe's eye. “He was intemperate and of a cruel heart … Never could my Lordship endure his name, or sight …” he read.

“What is this?” he asked, almost whispering. He felt suddenly cold.

“Nothing,” Kyd said, but he made no move to cover the pages.

“It's about Kit, isn't it?”

“Aye.”

“Why?”

“Because—You spoke of justice, but justice has not been done here. I went to prison because of your friend, I was whipped and tortured because of him and his blasphemous opinions. Is that justice? Does it seem to you that justice has been done?”

“But—but he's dead. Isn't that justice enough for you?”

“Nay. I'll never rid myself of the taint of atheism. I've lost my patron because of him—Lord Strange no longer speaks to me. I've had to give up the room I rented for lack of money.”

“But what you say here—it isn't even true. ‘Intemperate and of a cruel heart'—even you can see that's false.”

“Is it? He fought duels, he told me so himself.”

“Everyone fights duels.”

“Not I.”

“Nay, you use more cowardly means. Do you think that blackening his name this way will return you to your lord's favor?”

“I do, aye. And he's beyond caring, I assure you. I have to live. I have to win my patron back, and do it by whatever methods I can.”

“But this is monstrous!” Nashe said, horrified. He was about to say more, but suddenly he was visited by a premonition so strong it struck him dumb. Thomas Kyd would not survive the year. He had been so ill-used at Bridewell that his health had broken. They would all be dead, then, all the jolly companions, Robin and Kit and Tom. And he would have to find a way to go on alone.

Kyd said something else, but Nashe didn't hear him. He turned and left, his heart overcome with grief.

A few days later Tom Nashe found himself at the old tavern at the sign of the Saracen's Head. He had gone there for a midday meal, unable to work but unwilling to be alone with his thoughts. The tavern was nearly deserted because of the plague, but there was no one he wanted to talk to anyway. Why had he come? He could not rid himself of old memories; he thought he would give almost anything to hear Kit and Robin argue again.

It was as he had told Kit long ago: he was enchanted. The brown woman had enchanted him. Why else should he be the only one of all of them to survive? He had done nothing to deserve it.

The door opened and Will Ryder came In. He realized, guiltily, that he had given no thought to the boy since Kit had died, and he motioned him over. As Will sat Tom noticed that his usual open expression had gone; he looked like the stunned survivor of a disaster.

“I'm sorry,” Tom said softly.

“Aye,” Will said. “Aye, so am I. I keep thinking about the poem he was writing, and how no one will ever read the end of it now. I was going to be his patron, did he tell you?”

Should he tell Will what he knew? Would it help him or would it only serve to make him angry? But the need to unburden himself was too great, powerful enough to drive out any other consideration. Slowly at first, and then with more confidence, he repeated what he had told Tom Kyd.

Will listened, saying nothing. At least he would not condemn Kit out of hand, and for that Tom felt grateful. He had had enough of folks in London saying that Kit's death was punishment for his atheism. What about Tom Kyd? he had asked them. What sin had he been punished for? And what of the thousands who had died of the plague? God's judgments, he knew, did not work so neatly.

Will nodded when he had finished. “Aye,” he said. “The story I heard never sounded right to me either.”

He looked directly at Tom, and Tom, who had elicited hundreds of confidences over the years, knew what was about to happen next: Will would tell him something he had never told anyone else. For the first time in his life he felt he could not bear hearing another confession. But his face, so used to wearing an expression of interest and concern, must have betrayed him, because Will continued to speak.

“Do you know—I knew that man, that Robert Poley. My brother knew him. I'd seen them whispering together often enough, and I knew that he was not to be trusted. I tried to tell Kit not to go with him—”

“It wasn't your fault.”

“I know that. I know. But I keep thinking that if I'd tried harder, if I'd told him what I'd seen—”

“No one could ever talk him out of anything, once he'd made up his mind. He was the most stubborn man I ever met.”

“Aye, that's true enough.” Will almost smiled. “What do we do now? Do we go to the authorities with what you've told me?”

“They wouldn't believe us. Poley had agents of his swear that they were there in Deptford, swear that Kit was killed in self-defense. They've already been pardoned, all of them.”

“Then—we're helpless, aren't we? Who can we go to? I don't have the friends at court I once had—I've been away—”

“It has something to do with those men Kit saw at the palace, those misshapen men. And with the land I went to, and with Arthur. We don't need to go to court—if we find these people, these goblins or whatever they are—”

He took off his hat and looked at the unfading flower he had pinned to it. “They gave me this,” he said slowly. “What if this is a way to summon them? What if I had it these three years and more and never knew?”

“What are you going to do?”

“I don't know. Shall we try to summon them up, like Faustus calling up Mephostophilis?”

“Nay, don't—”

“Don't worry—they're not demons. I know that much about them.” He unpinned the flower and held it in his hand. “Maybe if—if I think about them—”

He fell silent a moment. Nothing happened. “Well, it was worth trying,” he said. He moved to pin the flower to his hat again.

“Nay, wait a minute. Who gave you the flower?”

“A woman—a beautiful woman—”

“Think about her. Call her to you. Summon her up in your mind—remember everything you know about her. What did she look like? How did she move? What color were her eyes?”

“Blue,” Tom said. He closed his eyes. “Blue as berries.”

“Good. And her hair?”

“Brown. Brown and tied up in a garland of flowers.”

“And what did she—Tom. Tom, look.”

He opened his eyes quickly. There in the dim light of the tavern stood the woman he had carried in his mind for three years. “You wear my favor,” she said. He had never heard her voice before; it was clear as a running stream. “I'd forgotten that.”

“Aye,” Tom said. He could not seem to speak above a whisper.

“Then are you prepared to fight for us?”

“To—to fight?”

“Aye. We are not ready yet, and we try never to fight in the light of the sun, but you have called us to you. We cannot resist a summons by a mortal who wears our favor—the battle must begin now.”

“Battle?”

“Come.” She turned and began to leave the tavern.

“Wait!” he said, calling after her. The few men in the tavern looked up at him in surprise; no one but he and Will seemed to have seen her. “Wait—at least tell me—”

But she had opened the door and was gone.

20

A week after Art had come to live with her Alice saw Walter making his way toward her station. “Shall we close our stalls?” he asked, smiling. “I haven't sold a book all day.”

“What do you want to do?” she said. As always her voice trembled a little when she spoke to him, though she tried to control it. What would he think if he knew her true feelings about him? She thought that she would not be able to face it if he did.

“See a play, I thought.”

“We've seen all the companies that stayed in London,” she said, more sharply than she intended. “I should know—I publish the playbills.”

“What, then? We can't stay in this dismal place.”

As if to underscore his words a bell rang out, tolling for another death. She looked up at the tower of Paul's, remembering that she had seen a young man—had it been Tom Nashe's friend?—climb to the top. In all her years in the city she had never seen the view, though it seemed that every visitor to London went there. “We could go to the top of the tower.”

He said nothing, and for a moment she feared she had been too forward. Until now they had only gone to playhouses and cookshops together, and perhaps he would not want to disrupt that routine, to change the nature of their friendship. Then he said, “That's an excellent idea. I've always wondered what the city looks like from there.”

She closed her stall and led the way into the church. They walked through the huge wooden nave, their footsteps echoing off the high arched ceiling. It seemed strange to hear the church so quiet; usually the halls rang with the sounds of men preaching sermons, lawyers calling for clients, employers looking for folks to hire. Then they went up the stairway to the top.

She was a little winded from the climb, but even so the view took her breath away. London spread out before them like an engraving, small and vital. They could see the stairs leading down to the Thames, and beyond that the sun striking the sails of the boats on the river. To their left was London Bridge, and across the river she could just make out the round building that was the Bear Gardens.

“I should have come here a long time ago,” Alice said.

“You've never seen this?”

“Nay.”

“And you've lived here—how long?”

“Over twenty years.” She laughed. The river below them sparkled and dimmed as the sun moved in and out of the clouds. “But you've been here three years and have never seen it either.”

“Aye.” They fell silent, watching the ever-changing scene beneath them. He began to speak of his life before coming to London, the inn he had owned, the problems of being an innkeeper. “My wife couldn't stand it,” he said. “I would have come to London long ago, probably, if she had lived.”

“Your—wife?” she asked, startled.

“Aye. She died in the last great plague, nearly thirty years ago.”

“And you never remarried?”

“Nay. And you—what was it like for you when your husband died?”

She had never spoken of John's death to anyone, not even Margery; she had not wanted to trouble folks with her sorrow. Now it seemed to her that if she started she would not be able to stop, that she would burden Walter with the accumulated weight of four years' unhappiness. But he had probably asked out of politeness, and not because he really wanted an answer. She said, carefully, “It was hard, especially at first.”

He turned away from the view in front of him and looked directly at her. “Alice, you are the most vexing person I know.”

“What?” she said, surprised. “I—”

“In all the years I've known you you have told me nothing about yourself. Your son has gone missing, but I know that from the other stationers and not from you. Now your sister has died, and you have a new son to care for, but you have said not one word about your sister or your son. I have never heard how it was your husband became a stationer, or what it was like for you to take over his trade, or how you feel about George's accusations against you. If I didn't listen to the other stationers I would almost think you had no life outside of the churchyard.”

She had listened to him talk with growing amazement. At the end of it she found she could not speak, did not know where to begin. It had grown hot in the tower, and stuffy from lack of air. “I—”