Crimson Rose (13 page)

‘True.’ Constance chewed her lip, thinking. ‘And it isn’t as though this house was easy before Eleanor died. The children alone would drive you demented, with their constant crying and want, want, want. And the comings and goings at night were like nobody’s business …’ She raised her eyes to Marlowe’s and put a soft, white hand on his chest. ‘And now there’s only me and the old nurse, and the maid has gone. Back to mother, she says, though I don’t think she is any better than she should be.’

‘Her mother?’ Marlowe was almost disappointed that this was proving to be so easy. This girl was like a fountain trickling from a wall; all he needed to do was to sit beside it and he would hear all he needed to know.

She stroked gently down his chest and tucked one finger into his belt. He removed it and held her hand, for good measure. He remembered Shakespeare’s admission that she seemed to know her way about a man. ‘No, Master Marlowe,’ she said, in a voice like a sucking dove, as Shakespeare would doubtless have it. ‘No, the
maid
is not better than she should be.’

‘Oh, I see. So, you think that she was the cause of all this coming and going, do you?’

‘Well, it wasn’t me, and old nurse is past that kind of thing. And of course, Eleanor is – was – a widow, a very respectable widow. She wouldn’t be up at all hours, with the door opening and closing all night long.’

Marlowe decided to play her at her own game and took a tendril of her ebony hair and twisted it round his finger. ‘Not you, Mistress Constance? Surely you are a woman who could well cause a bit of door opening and closing?’

‘Master Marlowe,’ she said, leaning in to his hand, ‘I am a maid.’

He twisted the hair once more round his finger and she winced, putting up her hand to free it but finding he had her fast. ‘Not a maid, as such, Mistress Constance, surely,’ he said, still in the same friendly tone. He reached with his other hand and patted her belly, which was tight as a drum behind her stomacher. ‘Or should I perhaps inform the Archbishop of Canterbury that we have a virgin birth to look forward to?’

She twisted away, but took his hand with her. He was pulling her hair quite frankly now, there was no caress left in the gesture. ‘Let me go. You’re hurting me. I will tell the Constable.’

‘Will you? I believe that philandery is a felony, Mistress Constance. You have a lovely house here, no doubt with lovely things in it. What a difference some of this would make to the life of poor Mistress Shaxsper, bringing up three children all alone in Stratford.’

Constance stopped pulling against his restraining hand. ‘Mistress Shaxsper?’ she asked, smiling. ‘What has she to do with anything?’

‘Criminal conversation, Mistress. With William Shakespeare, as he calls himself in London.’

‘I would hardly call it a conversation, Master Marlowe, if I were to be honest. We had a chat now and again, to that I will attest. Anything lasting less than three minutes is not a conversation. But, you are right …’ She tossed her head again. ‘Can you let go of my hair? I will tell you all I can, but it is a little painful.’

He twirled his finger to release the curl and she stepped back, combing her fingers through her hair gratefully. She twisted it up behind her head, away from temptation and secured it quickly with her combs.

‘I am right?’ he prompted her.

‘You are right, I am with child. But it isn’t Master Shakespeare’s child. I was already with child when I came to him. He must not know much if he thinks it is his – and yet you tell me he has three children?’

‘He does. Two girls and a boy, if memory serves.’

‘Well, his wife must keep her counsel.’ She smiled wryly. ‘No, my child belongs to someone else entirely and –’ she held up a finger – ‘do not ask who, because I don’t know.’

Marlowe was secretly disappointed. He had hoped not to find that Eleanor Merchant was keeping a common bawdy house, and yet it seemed to be the case. ‘A … customer?’

‘No. I am not a whore, Master Marlowe, no matter what you think of me. After the father of my child, Master Shakespeare is the only man with whom I have lain.’ Her navy-blue eyes looked into his and, although he knew he had often been fooled before, he felt inclined to believe her. ‘I was asleep in my bed some four months since and I was awoken by the noise of a strange knock on the door. I heard my sister go down to answer it and then footsteps on the stairs. Then, before they reached the second landing, where my sister sleeps with the children, there was another knock, a hammering this time, not the gentle knock there had been before. I heard my sister speak, sharply, to whoever was with her and the light that had been shining under my door went out. She went downstairs and I heard her talking again. This time, she took whoever it was into the kitchen, at the back of the house.’

She sat down suddenly on an oak chair in the hall and crouched over with her hands across her stomach.

‘I was frightened. I didn’t know what was going on. I was too afraid to go to sleep, but could see nothing in the dark. Then, my door opened. I saw the figure of a man outlined against the faint light from the landing and then the door closed again. I held my breath. I didn’t know who it was.’

‘But surely, your sister would not have taken a stranger upstairs, to where her children slept?’ Marlowe was still ready to bet his purse on the bawdy house.

‘I didn’t know what to do. I lay as still as I could as the man backed into the room. When the backs of his legs hit the bed, he sat down and I gasped, or cried out, because he whispered, “Who’s there?” and twisted round to find my throat. I felt his fingers closing, then he said again, really softly, “A girl? How old are you?” I told him eighteen and he took his hand away. He told me to be quiet, for his sake if not my own, then asked if he could hide in my room, that he was a friend of my sister. I was still afraid, but said he could and eventually, I went back to sleep, although I know that sounds strange.’

Marlowe knew what she meant. Often, in moments of extreme danger, he had felt a lassitude creep over him. It was nature’s way of cutting the fear, of sending you to sleep, to a better place. ‘No, Mistress. I understand. And he took advantage of you?’

She smiled then, and looked up under her lashes at him. ‘No, Master Marlowe, by no means. I woke up in the early dawn and he was sleeping beside me. He wasn’t much older than I was, handsome but tired looking and wearing poor clothes. I watched him sleep and saw that he was … stirring. I think you take my meaning?’

Marlowe nodded.

‘I have only a sister, Master Marlowe, and although I lived with her while her husband lived, I was never privy to … any of their private ways, if you understand me. I was curious. I unlaced his breeches, just to see what he kept in there. I was admiring his possessions when I heard a sound and realized that he had woken up. Then … well, who took advantage of who is still a mystery to me. I slept … afterwards, and when I woke, he had gone. Eleanor never spoke of him, and how could I ask her? So, here I am.’ She spread her arms, leaning back so that Marlowe could see the swell of her stomach. ‘No husband, no lover, no sister and, since today, no maidservant. I am not even sure how much money I have. My nephew and nieces are with an aunt in the country, as wards of court. The only thing of value in the house is that old silver jug there.’ She indicated it with a toss of her head. ‘And I’m not even sure that is really mine. Sometimes it stands on that shelf, and sometimes it does not.’

Marlowe walked across to the little shelf across the corner. The silver jug was no ordinary piece, he could see. He hefted it in his hand. The weight of silver alone made it more valuable than most of the other fixtures in the house, if the hall was any guide. It was, as far as he could judge, Italian, with a squared-off top, each corner finished with a grotesque mask, with lolling tongue and squinting eyes. Each one was slightly different, but each one had a hole through to the jug’s interior, so all could be used to pour through. The sides were heavily chased and the scenes were as grotesque as the masks. It was not a church vessel, the images made that clear. But as to its value, he wouldn’t like to say.

‘It frightens me.’ Her voice sounded like a child’s. ‘In the dark, when candlelight falls on it, the people seem to run, the tongues to drool. I wish it had been away when Eleanor died. Then I wouldn’t have to worry about it.’

Marlowe could see what she meant. He could almost feel the little figures squirming under his hand. ‘It is valuable, Mistress Constance. I don’t care to take it back to my lodgings, but I know a man who would understand this and could keep it safe for you. Until you find out to whom it belongs, at least.’

‘Would you take it? Please, do. I don’t like it in the house. Where does it go when it isn’t here?’ Her voice was beginning to rise, and she was clasping and unclasping her hands in front of her.

‘I’ll take it,’ he said. ‘Do you have a bag, or a cloth, perhaps …?’

‘In the kitchen. At least the maidservant washed the linen before she went.’ She went through a door into a passage behind her, speaking as she did so over her shoulder. ‘So … now you know what is happening to me, Master Marlowe. How goes it with Master Shakespeare?’ She came back into the hall and passed him a piece of ironed linen, which he used to wrap the jug. She seemed happier just to see it out of sight.

‘He is … well.’ Marlowe was trying to assimilate it all. Then he had a thought. ‘Master Alleyn. Is he still … calling on you?’

She pulled out her combs and tossed her head. ‘Who do you think I was waiting for, Master Marlowe? My baby needs a father and one actor will do as well as any other, don’t you think?’

Marlowe turned to the door when there was a firm knock on the other side.

‘That’s him,’ Constance said, jumping up and loosening the shoulders of her gown. ‘Go, go out the back way. I am four months gone already and don’t have a moment to lose.’ She pushed him down the passage towards the kitchen. ‘If you go through there, you will reach the yard. You can climb over the back wall and you will be in a lane that joins this street again further down.’

The knock came again, harder this time. The knock of a man with little time to lose. Marlowe looked at her standing there, none too bright, lovely as the day. She had an actor to con. He could come back and see her again if he needed more information.

‘Goodbye, Mistress Tyler,’ he said, stroking her cheek. ‘Good luck with Master Alleyn.’ And he ran off down the corridor, chuckling at the thought of Alleyn, learning his lines through the howls of another man’s bastard. What went around surely did come around.

The night suited Nicholas Faunt. It fitted him like a glove as he padded silently through sleeping Blackfriars. He saw the officers of the Watch with their staffs and horn lanterns and the Apprentice boys who should have been in bed loitering in dark corners. At his back he carried a dagger; any footpad who fancied his luck would be ready for that. They may even have been ready for the second, tucked neatly under his left armpit and thin as a needle. But no one would be expecting the third, slipped into his left buskin. That was the one that got them every time. And all the more so because the deadly blade came from nowhere, from a man to all intents and purposes unarmed.

He reached the door he wanted in Water Lane and tapped on it. He heard voices from inside, a female one, shrill and insistent, a man’s voice, not saying much and fading from even Faunt’s almost miraculous hearing. But no one came to the door. He tapped again, rather harder this time. He may be under cover, but he was after all on the Queen’s business. This time, after a brief pause, the door swung open about halfway and a girl’s face peered round it, coquettishly. Her face was a perfect oval, with startled and startling navy-blue eyes reflecting back the light from the torches in the street. Her hair, so black it was almost blue, hung loose about her shoulders, one tendril curling on to a milk-white breast. One hand held a candle aloft and the shadows did such wonderful things for her bone structure that Faunt could not believe that it was accidental.

She stared into his face and her own face fell.

‘My apologies, madam,’ Faunt said, sweeping off his hat and sweeping into the hall in one fluid movement. ‘I believe you may have been expecting someone else.’

She looked hurriedly round the door before she closed it. ‘Do you know what chime was last heard?’ she said anxiously.

He smiled to see someone so innocent that she didn’t ask who he was, but took steps first to find out how late her lover was; because it was clearly a man she was waiting for and he was very late. Faunt had no idea just how late; a little matter of four months. ‘I believe I heard it strike the quarter to seven as I passed St Katharine Trinity,’ he said. Then he bent to her. ‘Mistress Tyler?’ he said. ‘My condolences, madam.’

‘Do I know you?’ she asked.

‘We have met,’ Faunt said, taking her hand and kissing it gallantly. ‘From time to time.’

There was a faint flicker of recognition in her eyes. ‘You are Eleanor’s friend,’ she remembered. ‘You came here sometimes.’

‘More a friend of Master Merchant, perhaps, in the early years. But after his … demise, your sister’s friend also, I hope. I remember when I met you first, you were just a little girl. You played the dulcimer for me. You were very good.’

‘I was terrible,’ she said with a smile. ‘I can’t remember your name, though.’

Faunt seemed not to have heard. He was admiring the black drapes, proper for a house in mourning. He walked around the hall, taking in such details as were visible in the light of her single candle. Then he turned to her again. ‘I believe you also know Master Shakespeare,’ he said, as though making conversation over dinner.

She looked at him frostily. ‘Of course I do,’ she said. ‘He was our lodger and he killed my sister. I will remember Master Shakespeare if I live to be a hundred.’

‘He is in the Clink, I believe.’

‘So I understand,’ she said. Then she furrowed her brow. ‘May I ask why you are here, Master …?’

‘Oh, just to pay my respects and to make sure that you are well. How are the children? Are they here?’ He looked about him as though they might be playing blind man’s buff in a corner.