In the crib was a twisted briar mockery of a baby, blackened and covered in thorns, but it writhed as its mother cooed over it. Sickened, Marlowe turned away.
‘That is a beautiful child, indeed,’ Will said. ‘Now, my friend would like to see your garden, while I attend to a matter here.’
The woman smiled, but her eyes showed little sanity left. Hesitantly, Kit led her outdoors, casting troubled glances at his companion.
Once they had gone, Will snatched the changeling from the crib. It spat and lashed out tiny, thorny hands. He hurled it on to the fire where it cried like a real baby before it was consumed by the flames.
Barely had the last screech died away when Will heard Marlowe shouting. He rushed out into the small herb garden, only to see his friend hunched over the bank of the rushing spring river that curled past the cottage.
‘She threw herself in,’ Kit gasped, reeling.
‘Though her mind was destroyed, a part of her knew the truth. That is why we fight the foul Unseelie Court. They prise open the weaknesses in the human heart and destroy from within. They have done this since man first walked England’s green land and they will try to do it until judgement day if we are not vigilant.’
After a long silence, Marlowe said quietly, ‘And I will stand by your side, God help me. Though my life be corrupted by dread from this moment on, I do what I must for my fellow man.’
Proud but sad, Will had clapped his friend on the shoulder and led him back to their horses with the promise of a night of wine to dull the memories, but they both knew Kit’s life was changed for ever.
Will flashed back to the moonlit courtyard, his heart heavy with grief at his friend’s passing. That day in Stratford their friendship had been forged, for they had shared an experience, however terrible, that set them apart from their fellow men. Despite Will’s fears, Marlowe had survived and grown to be an effective spy. A good man, a sad man, and now he was gone.
What part, if any, had the Unseelie Court played in his friend’s demise?
Looking to the top of the Lantern Tower, Will whispered, ‘Kit will be avenged. And if I find your pale hands stained in his blood, you will pay a thousandfold. I vow this now.’
CHAPTER ELEVEN
‘Who killed Christopher Marlowe?’ Carpenter asked in a low voice. The guttering candle in the centre of the beer-stained trestle illuminated the unease in his features.
Enveloped in the shadows that engulfed the rest of the small, hot, low-ceilinged room, Will and Launceston leaned in to the dying flame.
‘We have a few suspects,’ Will mused, his mood as dark as when he had left the Palace of Whitehall. ‘Frizer, the one who stood accused at the inquest. Poley, his associate, a man we all know is capable of anything.’ He paused, damping down his anger. ‘Or even Thomas Walsingham, Kit’s patron. There were always rumours that their relationship was more than just business, but who knows? I saw little sign of grief in him. Yet Kit’s young friend Tom said Marlowe was gripped with a fear for his own life that very same morning. Would he then proceed to a meeting with the men he was afraid would kill him?’
‘When your attacker’s devil-mask slipped at the Rose, you say you thought you knew the face beneath?’ Carpenter enquired.
‘’Twas a glimpse. The merest suggestion of recognition. I would not say more than that.’
‘Hrrrm,’ the Earl said thoughtfully. ‘One spy dead, another attacked. But what part does this devil of yours play? This vision you had of the Unseelie Court?’
Will listened to the sound of energetic lovemaking reverberating through the ceiling from the room of one of Liz Longshanks’ doxies. The bedroom at the top of the Bankside stew, and his favourite comely companions, pulled at him, but instead he was there, sequestered in the private room at the back where the rich merchants drank before indulging their carnal desires. ‘I have thought about this a great deal, and I have come to believe that it was a warning.’
‘From whom?’ Launceston breathed.
‘Kit Marlowe. He knew nothing of conjuring devils. All he conjured was words. I have no idea how he could have brought that … that thing,’ the spy flinched at a painful vision of Jenny, black eyes gleaming, ‘into existence on the stage.’
‘There are plenty in the government and the court who considered him devilish for his outspoken views,’ the white-faced man continued.
‘The vision felt like it was a portent, perhaps, or some kind of guidance, though it had the feel of a dream. Fractured. Symbolic. Off-kilter.’
‘Then what use is it?’ Carpenter sniffed.
Frustrated, Will reflected for a moment, then plucked a new candle from the mantelpiece and lit it with the dying flame of the old. The shadows in the room fled to the corners. From under his stool, he pulled the coarse sack young Tom had given him at the funeral, and tipped the sheaf of papers on to the table. Carpenter leaned past him to read the title scrawled on the front in Marlowe’s familiar flourish.
‘
With deft fingers, Will plucked the folded letter from under the string around the bundle. ‘Kit was keen that I received this work, and he has never given me one of his plays before.’ Holding the letter close to the candle, he scanned it quickly. The words had been written at speed, scrawled feverishly and at times blotted where the ink hadn’t dried before the letter was folded.
By the time Will had read the note, Carpenter was once again at his shoulder, his brow now furrowed. ‘Trust no one? This sounds to me very like a plot.’
‘That explains why Kit was not at his first night. He was in hiding.’ Will got up and went to the tray to pour himself some wine. He placed one foot upon a stool and sipped his drink, brooding.
Launceston drew his long, white fingers over the sheaf, stopping to tap on the wax that sealed the string. ‘A secret message, then. A warning,’ the Earl suggested in his whispery voice.
‘Trust no one,’ Carpenter repeated. ‘He states the obvious, for once. Damn this world we inhabit. Everyone keeps secrets, separate lives. We know little even of those we depend upon.’
‘As in life,’ Will said with a shrug.
Carpenter drained his drink in one go and slammed the goblet down on the trestle. ‘We expend all our energies keeping secrets from each other,’ he snarled, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘What would our old master Sir Francis have said? Since his death, our world has fallen into darkness, and we all march on the short road to hell.’
Will became aware of Launceston scrutinizing him. He had come to believe the Earl was acutely sensitive to the emotions of others because he couldn’t feel or understand his own. ‘What is it, Robert?’ he asked, taking a sip of his wine.
The Earl spread the fingers of both hands on the trestle before him. ‘I am thinking about the Irish woman you encountered in the churchyard, the one who spoke to your assistant at the Rose. She knows of the plot, somehow. You did not recognize her?’
‘He has forgotten more women who have graced his bed than you or I have ever encountered,’ Carpenter muttered.
‘She is not familiar, though I will pay strict attention if she crosses my path again. Perhaps she is a friend of Kit’s.’ He returned his gaze to the letter.
Launceston was thinking the same, Will could see. ‘If Marlowe could have written clearly, he would, but he was afraid his message would be intercepted,’ the Earl noted, tapping one scrupulously clean fingernail on the table. ‘And so, perhaps, he hid clues to what he knew within the words of his own play?
