The Enterprise of England (27 page)

We both looked at Rikki, who sat alert, watching us.

‘I need a collar for him.’

‘We have plenty.’ She cast an expert eye, then reached into a cupboard behind her. ‘This should fit.’ It was a supple length of cow hide with a plain buckle and no ornamentation. ‘Unless you would like something prettier.’

‘No, this is good.’ I clasped it round Rikki’s neck. Bess had judged right. The collar fitted well, with just enough slack for comfort. ‘I should have a lead as well, I suppose, though he is obedient enough even without one.’

I paid for both items, rolled up the lead to fit in my pocket, and left my good wishes for the rest of the family.

Rikki shook his head a few times as we continued on our way, and once sat down and scratched at the collar. Clearly he had never worn one before, but I felt it was wise to fit him with one. The city dog catchers of London never hesitate to kill stray dogs, for they are believed to carry the plague. They would at least hesitate briefly before drowning a dog wearing a collar.

At we neared
Duck Lane I noticed that Rikki had scented the smell of the Shambles and all the butchers’ shops around Smithfield. I had given little thought to how I was to feed him, but at least we were well placed for butchers’ scraps. I had told Berden I would find a home for the dog when I reached London, but it was becoming more and more difficult to think of parting with him.

It was almost dark when I reached home and saw a shaft of candlelight falling from the kitchen window, not yet shuttered. Our ground floor windows were glazed, but it was cheap glass, full of swirls and lumps. Through it I could see movement, but nothing clearly. Upstairs we had only shutters, which were closed against the cold. I opened the door and stepped inside, enveloped at once in warmth and steam. Joan was bending over and stirring a pot hanging from a hook over the fire; my father was sitting in his carved chair at the table, a book open in front of him, his chin resting on his hand and his eyes closed.

At the rush of cold air and the sound of the door, Joan swung round and my father opened his eyes. He looked confused for a moment, then stood up and came to me, holding out his arms. We hugged each other.

‘Kit! Home at last! We did not know when you would be here.’

‘I reached London this afternoon, but had to report to Sir Francis.’ I put down my baggage on the coffer and closed the door. Rikki had followed me in and stood looking about him with interest.

‘Wisht!’ Joan rushed over, flapping her apron and aiming a kick at him. ‘There’s a dirty stray followed you in off the street.’ She made a grab for the door and pulled it open. ‘Be off with you!’

‘No!’ I caught hold of Rikki’s collar as he shrank away from her and began to retreat. ‘He’s mine. At least, he’s with me. Leave him be, Joan.’ I closed the door again.

‘A dirty cur like that? Get him out of my kitchen, Master Alvarez.’

I was tempted to say that it was not her kitchen but my father’s. However, that was not the way to deal with Joan.’

‘If he is dirty, that is no more than I am, after weeks of travelling. Besides, he is injured. He took a sword thrust meant for me and saved my life. I will wash him tomorrow.’

Joan turned to my father, her hands on her hips. ‘Dr Alvarez, we cannot have a filthy cur in the kitchen. He is probably carrying the plague.’

Rikki was listening to this conversation, looking from one to the other of us.

‘If he carried the plague, I would have it by now,’ I said. ‘I have ridden for days with him in front of my saddle, his body up against mine. I’ve no symptoms – not as yet, anyway.’

Joan looked at me sceptically, her mouth pursed up with disapproval, but my father laughed. ‘Leave them be, Joan. We are just happy to see Kit safely home. You say the dog is with you, Kit. Do you mean to keep him?’

‘Yes,’ I said, finally making up my mind and all the more stubbornly in the face of Joan’s objections. ‘His master is dead and he came to me. The least I can do is give him a home.’

‘Dead, is he?’ Joan muttered, turning back to her cooking. ‘Dead of the plague, most like.’

‘No,’ I said sharply. ‘He was murdered.’

I should not have said that, but I was suddenly exhausted and cold and could not tolerate her complaints any longer. I sank down on to a bench and Rikki pressed himself against my leg. I heard my father draw a sharp breath.

‘Murdered! You say he saved your life, the dog?’ he said.

‘Aye, but that was later. I will tell you about it tomorrow. Tonight I am too tired.’

The next morning I did tell my father what had happened in the
Low Countries, when we were on our way to the hospital and out of earshot of Joan. The first problem in owning a dog had already presented itself. I did not feel Rikki would be safe left with Joan, who would probably drive him out, whatever my father or I said. Yet I could not take him into the wards of the hospital. I had him on the lead, which he did not like, and hoped I could leave him with the doorkeeper in his lodge.

My father’s reaction to the account of my journey was silence at first. Then he said, ‘I do not like the way Sir Francis is using you, as if you were one of his agents. When you went to work there first, it was as a code-breaker and translator, in the office of Master Phelippes.’

And as a forger, I thought, but did not say aloud.

‘It seems to me,’ he went on, ‘that he is sending you into unnecessary danger. I know he does not realise that you are but a girl. Yet what he asks is too much even for a boy as young as you. You are not yet eighteen.’

‘Nearly,’ I said, a little stung by those words: ‘but a girl’.

‘I believe he often uses students,’ I said, ‘for it’s common for them to travel about in
Europe. No one finds that suspicious. And they would be of an age with me.’ I recalled that Simon had told me that Marlowe had worked for Walsingham while still a student at Cambridge.

‘In any case,’ I added, ‘I see no reason for him to use me again. This time he had no one else available to go with Nicholas Berden. And Berden is very experienced.’

‘Hmph. Was it not he who led you into danger, near the Spanish army?’

‘Only following instructions from Walsingham. Besides, thanks to Rikki here, I came to no harm.’

Wanting to divert him from these thoughts, I drew a heavy purse out of my doublet and handed it to him. ‘I did not want to give you this in front of Joan, in case she asked for more wages!’

He looked at the purse in surprise, feeling the weight of it in his hand. ‘What is this?’

‘Payment from Sir Francis. He did not expect me to work for a month unpaid. Buy yourself some warm clothes for this cold weather.’

‘Books!’ he said, his eyes gleaming.

As I knew he would.

My life fell back into its old pattern, working every day at the hospital with my father and Dr Stevens where, as I had expected, the wards were already filled with patients suffering from the usual winter complaints, ranging from coughs and sore throats through to chest infections and pneumonia. And, as in every winter, we did our best, but we lost some, mainly those who were already weakened by poverty and a poor diet. When I asked Peter Lambert to prepare scurvy water for pauper children with rickets, I thought of Captain Thoms and his sailors and wondered how their preparations for the invasion were faring.

Christmas came and I spent it again with the players. My time away and my experiences in the
Low Countries had somehow created a distance between us, so that things were not as easy as they had been. Marlowe spent some of the time with us, and I noticed that he and Simon were on very good terms, something I did not like. Yet, what could I say? They were part of the same world, this world of the playhouse, despite the fact that Marlowe had come there from Cambridge. It seemed that he had great ambitions as a playwright, though Burbage had not yet agreed to mount one of his plays, which he said were too elaborate and too expensive.

Marlowe had other irons in the fire. He was carefully cultivating Sir Francis’s younger cousin, Thomas Walsingham, as his patron, and travelled down to
Kent to spend part of the Christmas festivities at his estate. As far as Thomas Walsingham was concerned, Marlowe was not part of the disreputable world of the playhouse, but a gentleman poet, a university man. Certainly Marlowe dressed the part and I often wondered how he came by the money for such finery. His own family was humble, his stepfather nothing more than a bricklayer, so whence the riches? Some may have come from Thomas Walsingham, some from work for Sir Francis, but perhaps some came from a more disreputable source.

When I raised this with Simon, during the time Marlowe was down in
Kent, it led to our first real quarrel.

‘How dare you suggest such a thing!’ Simon shouted at me, his face flushed and furious. ‘Marlowe is an honourable man.’

The angrier Simon became, the colder I grew. ‘I find it strange that he has so much coin to throw about,’ I said, in a hard, level voice. ‘He has neither family nor occupation. If it were anyone but your beloved Marlowe, you too would be suspicious.’

‘He is not my beloved Marlowe,’ he said through gritted teeth. ‘I just do not like to see an honest man accused.’

‘I did not accuse him,’ I said. ‘I merely raised the question. And I wonder why that makes you so angry.’

‘He probably won it at cards,’ Simon blustered, ‘or by betting on horses. That is what gentlemen do.’

‘Ha!’ I said, stung. ‘What do you know of what gentlemen do?’ I thought briefly of my own life in the highest ranks of Coimbra society before I came to England, but I could not speak of it.

‘Why do you not ask,’ Simon jeered, ‘when he comes back to
London? “I am curious, Kit Marlowe, about your riches. Will you settle an argument between Simon and me?” That way we will know.’

‘Perhaps I will,’ I said, and stormed off.

I did not go back to the playhouse for two days, but then it was Twelfth Night and James Burbage had pressed me to join the players. I did not want to insult him, so I went with them for a meal at their favourite inn. Simon seemed to have forgotten our quarrel and Marlowe had not returned, but I kept my distance, until Burbage reminded everyone that it was my birthday, and they all drank a toast to me. A new year for me and a new year for the country, with the threatened invasion looming ever nearer. 1588.

My resentment of Marlowe (and I confess it was touched with considerable jealousy) did not prevent my occasional visits with Harriot to Raleigh’s circle during these months. Sometimes Marlowe was there, sometimes not. Although our discussions were mostly concerned with scientific matters, affairs of the nation could not be shut outside the turret door. Ever since Drake’s daring assault on the Spanish navy at Cadiz, we had known that Spain would rebuild and retaliate. The only question was: When? In the spring – as I had feared – I was summoned to Walsingham again, to my desk in the little back room, and my work with Phelippes. Once again I spent the mornings at St Bartholomew’s and the afternoons at Seething Lane. Berden was away somewhere on another mission. From hints dropped, I suspected he had gone to meet Gilbert Gifford in Paris and perhaps provide money or other support for Henri of Navarre’s Huguenot rebels.

Rikki’s wound had healed well and once I had given him a bath and combed the tangles out of his fur, he was revealed as a light sandy brown instead of the much darker shade he had first appeared. I was able to buy scraps for him from the local butchers, using some of Walsingham’s money, which my father insisted I take.

‘If the dog saved your life,’ he said, ‘the very least we can do is feed him well.’

Rikki filled out and became the large, sturdy animal he was meant to be, and his loyalty to me was absolute and unquestioning. When I was working at the hospital, he stayed with the doorkeeper, who grew fond of the dog and often shared his own meals with him. When I worked at
Seething Lane, he went with me and soon insinuated himself into Phelippes’s office. At night he slept in my chamber and – I must admit it – on the end of my bed. Joan learned to tolerate him, though not to like him, so that the dog likewise learned to keep his distance from her.

As spring drew on, and passed, the burden of deciphering and copying grew ever heavier. We knew that
Spain was rebuilding her fleet, and she would not be taken by surprise again. When summer came, she would invade.

One day, Walsingham called me into his office.

‘Ah, Kit.’ He beamed at me. ‘I have received a letter from the Earl of Leicester.’

He laid his hand upon a packet lying on his desk. It looked too thick to be a letter.

‘Sir?’ I said, unable to think of anything else to say.

‘It refers to the service you did him in
Amsterdam.’

I had a sharp memory of
Leicester’s scornful laughter and his dismissal of me which was hardly better than a kicking.

‘
Hurst persuaded him, I assume, that what I said was true.’

‘Indeed.
Hurst found the bottle of poison amongst van Leyden’s possessions and took it to the Earl. They sent for an apothecary, who confirmed that it was belladonna. When van Leyden was summoned and questioned, he made some blustering reply, and offered to fetch papers to show that the belladonna was intended for medical use. They waited for him to return. By the time they realised he was not going to return, he had vanished.’