Silent Court (23 page)

‘Six,’ the princess said. ‘All girls. They miss their father.’ She sighed and passed a hand, almost transparent with fatigue, across her brow. ‘As do I.’

‘Then go to them,’ Lily said. ‘Gather them around you, all your girls. Ask them to bring into their minds their favourite day with their father, whether it was hawking, or reading, or walking or riding. Tell them to take that picture and enclose it in a globe, blown from the thinnest glass.’ As she spoke, she moved her hands in the air, sketching the globe. ‘Tell them to wrap the globe in the brightest colour they can imagine. Not red; that is for death in our company. Blue, or gold, or springtime green. Wrap the globe in the cloth and then throw it in the air.’ She likened her actions to the words. ‘And when the cloth comes fluttering down, empty, then their father will be well.’ She stood to one side to let the woman pass. ‘You will do it, madam, won’t you?’ she called after her.

The princess didn’t turn, but with one hand over her eyes and the other flapping as if to ward off demons, she ran down the landing and disappeared up a stair in the corner.

‘Does that work?’ Marlowe asked the girl.

‘Does what work?’ Lily asked, striding forward, already delving in her bag.

‘That globe. The cloth.’

‘Let me tell you just one thing,’ Lily said, turning to face him, at the foot of the Statholder’s bed. ‘I have never known it work without the globe, so why would I dispense with it now, at this most delicate time? Usually, it is the sick one who imagines the globe, and he puts his sickness in it. But who knows – it may work this way.’ She shrugged. ‘Why should it not?’

Marlowe stepped forward another pace and she stopped him with a gesture. ‘Not so near, Master Marlowe. Things are not always pretty at the bedside of the sick and I may need you with a strong stomach later. Stay back. Stay back.’

‘May I sit down?’ he asked.

‘By all means. But no nearer the bed than you are.’ She turned to him. ‘Do you know the Statholder?’

For a split second, Marlowe felt his heart thump. ‘Nearer the bed.’ That was almost Balthasar’s phrase for the place where Christopher Marlowe would die. Then he checked himself and answered the girl’s question. ‘No,’ he said. ‘He has been unconscious since we came to Delft.’

‘Why are we helping him, then?’ she said, still busy laying out her herbs and cloths.

‘He is on our side,’ Marlowe said, knowing as he spoke that the Egyptians had no side to be on.

‘The English side?’ she asked.

‘The side which doesn’t want Philip of Spain and his Inquisition to sweep across the land carrying all before it. If the Low Countries fall, who will be next? Soon the Egyptians will have nowhere to go.’

Lily looked into the blank face of William the Silent. ‘Sickness and sleep have wiped almost everything from his face,’ she said. ‘I doubt that even Balthasar could read anything from this page. But his wife seems a good woman and in my experience a man is seldom bad if a good woman loves him.’

‘Your experience?’ Marlowe said. ‘How old are you, Lily.’

‘This time, I am seventeen,’ she said. ‘But if you number all my years on earth, many hundreds.’ She stepped down from the bed and walked over to where Marlowe sat on a couch by the window, lit from behind by the frost light. ‘You are young,’ she said, ‘in these years and all years. But, you have great wisdom, Hern says. He says you will come again, or all is waste.’ She pressed a finger lightly between Marlowe’s eyes and ran it down his nose, over his lips and down to the point of his chin. ‘Now, be quiet, and let me heal this man, if I can.’

Marlowe tried to concentrate, but as he had found in Ely, Lily’s hands were everywhere over the length of the Statholder’s body. She took hardly any notice of his heavily bandaged head and it was hard not to cry out to her that the bullet had entered his brain and not his gut. She placed coloured stones, about the size of pigeons’ eggs, at intervals down his body and on the covers between his legs. She dipped a bunch of herbs in water from a flask and sprayed it over him, concentrating on his face this time. The man didn’t even flinch. Then, she walked down to his feet and held out her hands so her arms were straight from her body. She put the right hand over the left and leaned down, arms still straight, until her left palm was about an inch away from the coverlet of the bed. Muttering quietly to herself, she moved very slowly up the bed, with her hands always the same few inches above the Statholder. When she reached the head, she hovered her hands over the man’s face. She appeared to be pressing down hard, but against an irresistible force, because although the sinews in her elbows and wrists stood out clearly, she could not touch the living flesh beneath her palm. Then, as though he had struck her from below, her hands flew up over her head and she toppled over on her back, falling off the dais and landing with a crash on the floor.

Marlowe leaped from his seat and ran to the bed head. He instinctively leaned over Lily first; she was the one he knew was living. Of the Statholder he was still not sure.

The crash of her fall had brought people running. Hans Neudecker was first through the door and stood appalled at the sight of a dishevelled girl lying on her back near the bedside of his Master. Marlowe he knew, but could not work out quite what was going on; Charlotte had kept this attempt at healing from him. Hans was one of the pragmatic Dutchmen who had made Edward Kelly’s life so difficult and would not understand.

‘What is going on here?’ he bellowed, his stentorian voice echoing round the simple chamber. ‘Who is that woman?’

The doors behind him crashed back as Charlotte, followed by her children, came into the room, also alerted by the noise. ‘Do not shout so, Hans,’ she said mildly. ‘This was all my idea.’

Hans turned round in confusion. ‘Madam…’ he began, but broke off as the children rushed past him, climbing on to the bed at the foot.

‘Papa!’ little Emilia cried. ‘Papa has woken up.’ She turned to her mother, beaming all over her face. ‘You said he would, and he has.’

‘We threw the globe up, Papa,’ said another.

‘Mine went highest,’ said her sister, giving her a push.

‘Hush, children, hush.’ Charlotte wasn’t scolding them. She just needed the quiet to drink in her husband, sitting up with a puzzled smile on his face. ‘Don’t hug Papa so hard. He is still not well.’

Marlowe looked up from Lily, who was beginning to rouse herself. From his vantage point on the floor, details were difficult, but one thing was in no doubt. William of Nassau, known as the Silent, was pushing himself in to a seated position in the bed, with his children clustered round him. He looked over their heads to his wife.

‘
Lieveling
,’ she mouthed silently to him. ‘Welcome back.’

Marlowe, with his playmaker’s sense of timing, knew when a quiet exit was called for and, helping Lily to his feet, he crept round the walls of the bedroom and slipped with the girl, still woozy from the effort, down the stairs and back out through the eastern gate.

‘And so, the little princess, trailing light, lived happily ever after.’ Marlowe’s voice tailed away as little Emilia’s head flopped back on her pillow for the umpteenth time. He patted her starfish hand and tucked the covers around her ears before tiptoeing from the room. The candle still glowed because this little princess was afraid of the dark, the dark that had nearly claimed her papa. Marlowe nodded to the nursery maid sitting by the embers of the fire and made for the door.

Here, the bandage still on his head, stood the lion of Nassau himself, a curious half-smile on his face. ‘It seems my Emilia has a new favourite to tell her bedtime stories.’

‘I do my best, Highness,’ Marlowe said. ‘But I think she finds my Flemish rather funny.’

William patted the man’s shoulder. ‘It’s not many royal bodyguards who tell bedtime stories to the children of their charges.’ He walked with Marlowe to his oak-panelled study and poured them both a goblet of Geneva spirit. If truth were told, it was not one of Marlowe’s favourite drinks, but the Statholder and most of Zeeland seemed to live on it, so it must suffice.

‘Quite.’ William the Statholder seemed to read his mind, but more prosaically read his face as the gin hit home. ‘I’d rather some good Spanish wine, too, Christopher, but it’s treason to say so in these unnatural times.’

‘Does Emilia know her mother is unwell?’ Marlowe asked. He had no children of his own, but he had been brought up surrounded by girls and knew how their minds worked.

‘She is sleeping –’ William told him the state of things – ‘as her papa was sleeping for a time. That is what I have told Emilia. Her dear mama got very tired nursing and now it is her turn to sleep. She will soon be well enough to make us a whole family again, perhaps.’

‘Could Lily help her?’ Marlowe asked.

‘She might, but for now things are very delicate in my household, Christopher, and perhaps we can leave the miracles to come once in a while, rather than all together. The children must not be allowed to think, the
people
must not be allowed to think that if there is a problem it can be mended with some muttered rubric and some stones.’

‘But, it worked for you.’ Marlowe was not an Egyptian, and yet he was; he didn’t like to hear Lily being denigrated by the man who she saved.

‘There is gossip in the palace,’ the Statholder said, ‘that my wife is a witch who arranged for one of her coven to come and save me. If she is miraculously healed, then the call for her burning will not be long in coming. I will not put my Charlotte in the way of such gossip. Let her sleep. God will save her or He will not, as He wishes.’

Marlowe sighed, but bowed to the Statholder’s wishes. ‘In my country,’ he said, ‘the Egyptians are known as the children of the moon.’

The Statholder laughed. ‘The children of the moon,’ he said. ‘Such a nice name, much nicer than what my people will call my wife, should the stories take a hold. So, Christopher, we will let her sleep.’ He topped up their goblets. ‘But now, to practical matters. Your coming here has saved my life, by whatever means it was achieved. But you cannot be at my elbow for ever. What did this Walsingham intend when he sent you?’

‘You’d have to ask him that, Highness.’ He shrugged. ‘I am a mere cog.’

‘Ah,’ the Statholder mused. ‘We are all that. All part of God’s plan. Tell me plainly, how do you rate my chances at the Prinsenhof?’

‘I am no strategist, sir. You’d need a soldier for that.’

‘I have soldiers in plenty,’ William told him. ‘Generals and colonels and boy drummers coming out of my ears. I trust these men in the field because I have to. But we are not in the field now, Christopher. We are in a former convent in a little Dutch town. Objectively now, what can we do?’

Marlowe thought for a moment. ‘I may speak freely?’ he asked.

The Statholder nodded.

‘Get rid of Hans,’ Marlowe said.

‘Hans Neudecker? Man, he is my right arm.’

‘He let Jean Jaureguy reach you with a loaded pistol,’ Marlowe reminded him. ‘His guards would have let me through with a dagger. All of you have allowed the Egyptians to camp within your walls and your wife laid you open to the ministrations of Lily. You are too trusting, sir. Too trusting by half.’

‘So… I must get rid of Hans?’

Marlowe nodded. ‘Secure the gates to the south and east. Double the guards at each point and bring in someone you can trust to lead the Night Watch.’

‘Delft is a city, Christopher,’ William explained. ‘One of the many duties a Statholder has is to regard the economy of his people. If I turn the city into a fortress, we’ll all starve.’

‘If you don’t,’ Marlowe said darkly, ‘you’ll turn it into a dead house.’

William and his bodyguard fell silent, but the silence was full of unspoken thoughts which refused to crystallize out of the air.

Finally, Marlowe spoke. ‘A compromise, then. Keep the city as it is, but check and double check each merchant on the road. Every pedlar, every cart. Nothing comes or goes without the closest security by the most reliable people. But the Prinsenhof. You have builders here? Architects?’

‘Of course.’

‘Then we’ll turn
this
place into a fortress. Ramparts, arrowhead bastions, gun emplacements. I’ve seen something of that in my time.’

‘So have I –’ the Statholder nodded grimly – ‘but my people, Christopher; I must see – and be seen by – my people. There were rumours enough while I lay insensible. I must walk the walls and visit the squares each day or they will lose hope. If Parma comes… if he lays siege to us, it will be different.’

Marlowe nodded. ‘If you must do these things,’ he said, ‘you must. I will be your eyes and ears for as long as I can. The rest…’

‘. . . is up to God,’ the Statholder said devoutly.

Kit Marlowe smiled, but didn’t speak his thoughts. They were best if they joined the flocks of the unspoken words which already thronged the room.

TWELVE

‘
A
re you the one they call Hern?’ Hans Neudecker was at his most imperious when talking to the Egyptians.

Hern would have liked to have answered him with a flash of lightning and a rattle of thunder, but he settled for a low flourish and a gust of plumes in the breeze of the courtyard.

‘His Highness the Prince of Nassau requests your company,’ Hans looked with disgust at the rag-tail camp that had turned the Prinsenhof into a common stews. ‘All of you,’ he said.

Hern nodded to Simon, Frederico, Ernesto and Balthasar and the five of them followed Hans up the stone stairs that led under the archway, the others following in their wake. No one quite knew what this summons meant. They had performed for the Statholder’s court several times since their arrival, with fire-eating and juggling and columns of blue smoke. But they had never performed for the Statholder because he had been lying close to death in his private apartments. Only Starshine carried her tambourine; only Brackett had the snake coiling around him.

Hans led them to a landing they had not seen before, with marble floors and blue and white painted tile walls. They reached a pair of huge doors, gilded with the Nassau arms of the lion rampant and were told to wait. Hans slipped in by a side door and moments later the huge double doors swung back and the Nassau family sat in state like a court portrait, looking at them.