Traitor's Storm (13 page)

Skirrow held open the hut’s front door. ‘Welcome to Mead Hole, Master Sledd,’ he beamed.

Tom Sledd did not have time for his eyes to get used to the almost total darkness inside. Somebody rammed a boot into his calf from behind and he went down, sprawling on the floor. The dagger was gone from his back and he was spreadeagled over an upturned barrel, one large sailor grabbing one wrist, another large sailor grabbing the other. There was a scrape and spark of a tinder and a flame burst in front of his face, to be passed, seconds later, to a candle.

Holding the candlestick, an expensive piece of French silver gilt, a bearded man sat on an equally expensive chair, carved and inlaid with ivory.

‘Are you Thomas Sledd?’ the man asked, cocking his head to one side.

‘Who wants to know?’ the stage manager asked. If this was the hospitality of the Wight, he was not impressed.

He felt a stinging slap across his upturned face and as he dropped his head he felt blood dripping from his lip,

‘We ask the questions here, sonny,’ one of the sailors growled, pulling harder on Sledd’s right wrist so that he thought his arm would leave the socket.

‘Now, Jacob,’ the man with the candle said. ‘Where
are
your manners? I am Thomas Page, Master Sledd, captain of the
Bowe
. What brings you to the Island?’

‘Master Skirrow’s skiff,’ Sledd said, his lip already swelling to make his speech difficult.

‘Jacob,’ Page smiled, leaning back. ‘I do believe we have a wit among us.’ His smile vanished and he nodded at the sailors. Both men put their feet against the barrel and tugged. Sledd screamed. Those human racks would dislocate his shoulders any minute.

‘You can make as much noise as you like here, boy,’ Page assured him. ‘Nobody’s coming to your rescue. Now.’ He leaned forward like a conspirator. ‘Let me put my question another way. Why have you come to the Wight?’

Sledd sensed that another flippant answer would break his bones so he craned his neck to look into Page’s expressionless face. ‘I was sent for,’ he said.

‘Who by?’

‘Master Christopher Marlowe.’

‘And what is this Marlowe to you?’

‘He’s a friend,’ Sledd told him. ‘A playwright. I am stage manager at the Rose.’ He saw the lack of comprehension on Page’s face. ‘In London,’ he said. Then an inspiration came to him. ‘Master Philip Henslowe knows I am here. So does Ned Alleyn, the tragedian. Then there’s Will Shakespeare … he’s a playwright too.’

Page’s left hand caught the man’s collar and he pulled his head up towards the candle flame. The sailors held him fast. ‘I don’t give the Pope’s arse about playwrights,’ he said. ‘This Marlowe, what else is he?’

Sledd thought quickly, cursing himself for every kind of idiot for walking into this trap. The candlelight burned bright in his eyes until even when he shut them, the circles of blue light danced and flashed and he could not see shadows any more. ‘A poet,’ he said, as though he were breaking every confidence in the book. ‘A university wit …’

‘And?’ Page lowered the candle and ran his left hand through the lad’s hair. Then, with his fingers tangled in his curls, he suddenly jerked his head back so that Sledd heard his neck click. The bright light had gone now. That was because the candle was out of his direct eye-line and burning just beneath his chin. In fact, as he became aware of the smell, it was burning him. The hairs of his skimpy beard were curling still further in the flame that Page passed slowly to and fro under his chin. Sledd was screaming, trying to shake his head free of the grip and his arms free of the sailors. Singed hair was curling back to its roots, reddening his skin before it crisped to a bloody brown. ‘And?’ Page repeated.

‘He works for the government!’ he screeched. The candle was gone from his face and the fingers from his hair. He let his head fall, blowing desperately to extinguish any burning hairs still clinging to his skin.

‘Now, you could have said that earlier, couldn’t you?’ Page asked. ‘That would have saved you a lot of pain and me a lot of bother.’

Sledd shrieked again as the sailors yanked hard on his wrists and Page was once again shining the candle into the man’s face. He could see the flickering reflections in his terrified eyes. ‘How, works for the government?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know,’ Sledd sobbed, dreading the pain if that flame reached his chin again. ‘As God is my witness, I don’t know. I just came to put on a play, that’s all.’

‘A play?’ Page chuckled. ‘Well, how nice. Has it got a clown, Master Sledd? And a pig’s bladder? I
do
like a good comedy.’ He jerked his head and the sailors let go of the man’s wrists. He groaned and sagged forward over the barrel. His eyes were stinging with tears and he didn’t know which hurt most, his shoulders or his face. Page snuffed the candle out and stood up, brushing past the shattered man on his way to the door. ‘See yourself out, Master Sledd,’ he said as one of the sailors helped himself to Sledd’s purse. ‘Oh, and give my regards to Master Marlowe, won’t you?’

‘Damn this rain,’ Sir George Carey muttered out of the side of his mouth to his wife, as they stood under a dripping yew in the churchyard. ‘It’s gone right down my neck.’

‘Rain seems the right weather for a funeral, George,’ she replied tartly. She was glad her black clothes were old ones because the persistent drizzle would have ruined anything nicer. ‘Besides, and I am sure you won’t mind my reminding you, there is really no need to be here. We hardly knew … what’s his name again?’

‘Hunnybun. And of course I had to be here. He lay three days in my chapel before anyone claimed his body.’

Bet Carey shrugged a slim shoulder and took a step back further into the shelter of the tree. ‘He had no family, the maids were saying.’

‘Widower,’ her husband muttered. ‘No children.’

‘He lived alone, then?’

‘Lived alone, yes. But the gossip goes …’ Carey stopped himself. The man was dead, after all. Time to bury the gossip with his body.

Bet inclined her head and her eyes sparkled. ‘Do go on, George.’

‘This is according to Dillington, mind you, so probably not to be trusted.’

‘Tell me and then I can decide.’

‘According to Dillington, there were often lights seen out in Hunnybun’s fields at night. Shrieks. Howls.’

‘Spirits walking out on the meadow?’ Bet asked. She had never seen a ghost herself, but presumably a field was as likely a place to meet one as anywhere else.

‘That’s what the maids thought at first. Then, one night, one of them was going down Hollow Lane to meet her young man – a groom in Newport, I believe, and …’

‘George!’

‘Sorry … where was I?’

‘A maid. Hurry up, they will be here with the coffin in a minute.’

‘Yes, a maid going down Hollow Lane saw her master, breeches down round his ankles going at it something awful, if I may repeat her actual words …’

‘According to Dillington,’ she reminded him.

‘According to him, yes, something awful between the thighs of a lady, who was shrieking and howling fit to raise the Devil.’

‘How common,’ muttered Bet.

‘Indeed,’ her husband agreed. She was always very quiet on the rare occasions he was called upon to go it something awful. He sighed and wiped the rain off his face with his cuff.

‘Shhh,’ his wife hissed. ‘Here they come.’

The small crowd rustled to attention as the vicar led the cortège across the sodden grass from the church towards the grave. The sexton, never one to stand on ceremony, was leaning on the wall to one side of the grave, his pipe glowing as he drew on it thoughtfully. Another one down, he thought to himself; another one gone to a better place. The sextons of St Thomas were of two kinds: introspective and morose or introspective and miserable. Today’s was of the latter kind and he was enjoying every minute of this funeral. Rain, hardly any mourners, another lonely soul going under the sod. If it wasn’t so against his nature, he would have laughed out loud. As the vicar’s drone got louder, the sexton leaned down and twitched the sacking from across the grave mouth. He personally preferred to have the corpse approach the yawning grave, something of a reminder of mortality in his opinion, but he knew it could sometimes upset the ladies. He wouldn’t forget in a hurry the fuss and bother of hauling the Widow Buckett out of her husband’s grave when she came over unnecessary. And a waste of time as it turned out, for she was in it again not six months later. He turned and spat before looking down.

Marlowe, watching the proceedings from the back and making mental notes to use this gravedigger in a play should the occasion ever present itself, saw the man’s face change and his knees buckle just a little before he recovered himself. He looked up at the approaching vicar and held up his hand, his mouth working. Marlowe took a step forward. There was clearly something very wrong.

‘Vicar, vicar,’ the sexton said. ‘You’m got to stop this burial.’

The vicar sighed. He had worried about this man for some time now; he seemed to enjoy the whole process of burying people far too much. His heart stopped whenever he heard of an unexplained death in the parish for fear that the sexton was rustling up more business on his own account. In his turn, the vicar held up his hand and the pall-bearers stopped and waited patiently. The Urry brothers were at the head, their sons, like peas in a pod, holding up the feet. The linen cross over the coffin lid hung limply in the rain and one of the men stifled a sneeze.

The sexton edged round the grave and, leaning still on his spade, reached up to whisper in the vicar’s ear.

The man jerked away and said loudly, ‘No!’

Marlowe stepped nearer still. Bet Carey clutched her husband’s arm convulsively and stopped him moving forward. ‘What is it, George?’ she asked, her voice taut with anxiety.

‘I won’t know if you don’t let me go,’ he said and, shaking her off, joined the little group of the sexton, the vicar and Kit Marlowe.

‘What is it, Vicar?’ he asked, in ringing, Governor-like tones.

The vicar whispered something, with a vague gesture to the few mourners.

‘What’s that you say?’ Sir George Carey never could abide whisperers.

Marlowe leaned forward. ‘There is already a body in the grave, Sir George,’ he said quietly.

‘Well, there’s nothing new in that,’ the Governor said. He turned to the sexton, leaning heavily on his spade, the blade cutting into the turf. ‘Surely you find bones all the time, fellow. Did you dig this grave yourself? Why didn’t you just ferret them out and put them in the charnel house with the rest?’

The sexton was suddenly overwhelmed by his proximity to greatness. He knew that Sir George Carey was a conniving jackanapes who was out to bankrupt the Island for his own evil ends, but even so, he was the Governor and he had never stood this close to a nob before. He touched his hat and dipped his head. ‘’T’ain’t an old ’un,’ he explained. ‘’Tis a new ’un. Look.’ He turned and pointed down into the grave and the vicar and Marlowe craned over to see.

‘I am afraid I don’t know the gentleman.’ The vicar hurriedly looked away, turning pale.

Marlowe looked at Carey. ‘Sir George?’ he asked.

Carey looked down and then looked again, eyes bulging. ‘What in the name of all the saints is he doing there?’ he spluttered. Perhaps he could be forgiven for the rather Papist outburst in the circumstances.

The vicar thought that perhaps Sir George had missed the point. ‘We know he shouldn’t be there, Sir George,’ he said gently. Perhaps it was the shock …

‘I saw him off the Island,’ Carey said. ‘I had my Militia turn him off in an open boat. Damned lawyer. What’s he doing down there?’ He couldn’t take his eyes off the man in the grave, who lay there, one arm bent over his head, one knee drawn up and his eyes open, oblivious to the raindrops falling on them, giving them an almost lifelike brightness.

Marlowe touched the Governor’s arm. ‘Who is this man, Sir George?’ he said.

‘Compton. Matthew Compton. Damned lawyer.’ Carey kicked a sod of earth which crumbled wetly into the grave, landing on Compton’s body. ‘I’m going back to the castle until you sort this out, Vicar. If I were you, I’d change your sexton. The man doesn’t know his job.’ And he turned back to where Bet was sheltering under the arms of the yew.

But his wife had gone.

Sledd had no memory later of how he got to Carisbrooke. He remembered the jolting of a cart and whimpering a lot and some fool of a carter not understanding how the gen’leman from London could have got his injuries. Still, the carter knew, it was dangerous stuff, fire. And he should know. He’d been to school from time to time and had learned about that Master Prometheus who had stolen fire from the gods. And that was a true story; the carter knew it for a fact, certain sure.

There was a flame playing tricksily in Tom Sledd’s gaze. Could he actually see it, he wondered? Or was it burned on to his brain? But more than the light, there was a face behind it, glowing now bright, now pale and he could not make it out. He screamed.

‘It’s all right, Tom.’ It was Kit Marlowe’s voice, gentle, kind and puzzled. It was Kit Marlowe’s face beyond the candle.

‘Do you mind, Kit?’ the boy said, and lifted an arm that weighed like so much lead to wave the taper away.

‘What happened to you, man?’ Marlowe was looking horrified at his friend’s face. Below his swollen lip, his scanty beard had all but disappeared and there were blisters, filling and taut with pus, all over his chin.

‘A trio of gentlemen welcomed me to the Wight,’ Sledd told him. ‘After Master Skirrow disappeared, that is. They wanted to know all about you.’

‘Me?’ Marlowe frowned. ‘Who were they?’

‘The one who was handy with a candle called himself Thomas Page. Said he was captain of the
Bowe
.’

‘The
Bowe
?’ Marlowe repeated. He had seen that name somewhere before. ‘What did you tell them?’

‘Nothing,’ Sledd lied, a little too quickly for either of their liking. ‘Just that you were a playwright and I was here to help put on a play with you. That
is
right, isn’t it, Kit? I mean, that
is
why I’m here?’

‘Of course, Tom,’ Marlowe said soothingly. ‘Of course.’