Silent Court (8 page)

Hawkins looked up at the priest. He was still busy sending the old woman to her Maker, praying for her soul, interceding. Hawkins would have to do the hard work himself. ‘Was she found like this?’ he asked aloud. Mildmay didn’t answer and Gammer Harris didn’t either. He rummaged at the foot of the bed to find the dead woman’s clothes. Her shift was covered with dark blood. Her shawl was folded on top of her pinafore; both were stiff and dark with drying and clotted blood. Hawkins unpacked the neat parcel that Mother Moleseed had made of the thin, worn fabric. Inside, the blood was brighter red, still sticky and wet; Gammer Harris had lost almost all of her lifeblood to whatever weapon had cloven her head in two. He barely recognized her cap because what was once white was a ripped shred of crimson, the ties stiff with blood.

So the woman was fully clothed when she died. Mother Moleseed must have stripped the corpse as she laid the woman out with all that keening and nonsense. Hawkins wanted nothing to do with that. That was the vicar’s job. He looked at the pillow and the headboard, all of it dark and bloody. Whoever had killed Gammer Harris had hit her as she stood by the bed, or perhaps as she sat on it.

He could do no more for the woman in that room and he left the priest muttering over her and made for the fresh air. ‘Where’s Jem Harris?’ he asked the knot of neighbours. ‘Does he know of this?’

‘In the Lammas Field,’ someone told him. ‘He’s been sent for.’

‘And what about the Egyptians?’ Hawkins asked, ‘Has anybody seen them?’

The tent had gone up in lightning time, even for the accomplished Egyptian camp-builders. No one had to give an order, everything just seemed to happen by itself. The teeming children – eight in all but sometimes seeming like eighty as they swarmed around the onlookers, dipping in the odd pocket here and there to keep their hands in – had disappeared to a quiet wagon. The tale of the child crushed to death by a falling tent pole was true enough. It hadn’t happened to a child in this troupe, or to any child known to anyone there. It had probably not even happened to a child in this cold and frosty land, but that it had happened to a child somewhere, somewhen there was no doubt at all and so they instinctively kept out of the way. As the tent rose, to the rhythmic cries of the men, the women started the cooking fire and the bread making. The next thing that would happen, they all knew, was that the locals from Reach and Burwell would come skulking round, not making eye contact, not even being civil. The person you hate the most is the one who knows where the bodies are buried and ten minutes in a smoky tent with Balthasar Gerard was enough for him to know the innermost turnings in your very soul.

The camp was a tiny huddle of civilization in the vast unforgiving sweep of the lonely fens but within easy reach for superstitious country folk who needed their ten minutes with Balthasar. Since the caravan had passed through the town, people had been quietly falling into step behind and so by the time their camp was complete, with the single domed living tent in the middle, the smaller ones for cooking and for Balthasar’s secret work around it, the crowd was considerable, although thinly spread around the perimeter, no one wanting to catch the eye of anyone else. Hern got his tumblers together; townsfolk who were after a potion or a reading could justify their presence there if they were watching a show. The men called the children out of the wagon. They could all tumble almost as soon as they could walk and with their ribbon-covered clothes looked like tattered butterflies spinning through the air as the two strongest men threw the children from side to side of the area they used in lieu of a stage. Boys and girls, curled into tight balls, flew so fast the colours merged and the crowd soon grew, pollarders, hedgers and shepherds, lured away to the tune of the pipes and the thump of the drum. And if some of them melted off from the edges at a gentle touch on the arm from one of the women, it was a secret no one had to share.

The group of Egyptians that had got the Mayor in such a fury was small as such troupes went, with just eight children, five men and three women. No one as they watched them pass could tell which man and which woman each child belonged to and this gave extra weight to the rumour that they stole children as they passed through each town. Nothing could be further from the truth. Although the children were loved and cared for each one could only be another mouth to feed until they could earn their keep and even Egyptian children were not adept at picking pockets until they were at least five. Why steal a child when their own came along so easily? The women belonged to everyone and to no one except themselves. The children obeyed the men and ruled the women; some had forgotten who their mother was and their father was anyone’s guess.

Balthasar waited patiently in his tent, for the first of the people to slip in between the coloured canvasses which hung in the doorway. There was no light in the tent except a single candle, burning in the centre of the table. The candle was made of black wax, not for any other reason than that it made the petitioning townsfolk feel they were getting their money’s worth. Balthasar was an adept at reading people, their present certainly, if not their future, and he knew that it was all about giving value for money. The candle was part of the table top after many years of use. When the wick of the current one finally gave out, the next was placed on top of the shapeless corpses of its predecessors until a slick pile of black wax had formed, looking as if it had powers all on its own.

Balthasar half closed his eyes and waited for the soft flap of the canvas. Through his slitted lids, he saw that a woman had crept in, a shawl pulled low over her forehead and tight around her shoulders. This was to be expected – the evening was very cold – but she was wearing clothes to hide in, not just for decoration, vanity or warmth. He reached out to show her into her seat and managed to get a fragment of her shawl between his fingers for a second or two. Thick wool, not worn thin by years, so there was at least enough money in this woman’s household, and more likely money to spare. Her hands grasping the edges of the cloth were smooth and white, so she had at least one servant in her house. Balthasar sniffed. There was a soft warm smell of roses, powdered in frankincense which filled his little tent every time she moved. She was going up the social scale with every second which passed. This one would be easy; she either wanted to be with child or wanted not to be with child. A few simple questions and he would have a gold piece in his palm, or he was not Balthasar Gerard.

He did not break the silence; that was not his way. He preferred to let his petitioners start the conversation. This gave him another opportunity to find things out. How they spoke to him, how they addressed him would give him more clues as to their social standing. A tremor in the voice, a clearing of the throat would also tell him much.

‘Sir, what must I do?’ she said. ‘I expected you would ask questions of me, or make a pronouncement, perhaps.’

Her voice was low and clear, well spoken, but she had called him ‘Sir’ which he had not expected. She knew someone who had been to him already, perhaps here, perhaps in Cambridge, as it was often his custom to ask questions or make a sudden remark if the petitioner did not speak.

‘What is the purpose of your visit, Madam?’ he asked. ‘I can make no pronouncement until you speak to me.’

‘I have heard that you…’ She paused, finding the next bit difficult. ‘. . . I have heard that you can foretell the future.’

‘The future shifts, Madam,’ he said carefully. ‘I do my poor best to see beyond the veil.’ He had learned not to promise too much. Men – and women – who had parted with a coin were often remorseful later. This was not like buying a loaf of bread. They had little to show for their expenditure after a visit to Balthasar and waiting to see if his auguries would come true was not much to get for a groat.

‘My life is a burden to me,’ she said, leaning forward towards the candle. ‘If you can see no change, then…’

He looked up at her and saw in the faint light that she had a bruise down one cheek and an eye swollen and black in its socket. He gasped and reached for her hand. It was as cold as ice and the pulse at her wrist was racing and thready. ‘Who did this to you?’ he asked. ‘I feel that it is your husband,’ he rapidly added. If he couldn’t tell that, he was not much of a soothsayer.

‘I have no husband,’ she said.

‘I feel that this comes from a man who loves you, who you love,’ Balthasar floundered on. This must be a father, or a lover perhaps, but why would such a lovely woman not be married?

She sat back and put the shawl back over her head. ‘I can see that I was mistaken,’ she said, acidly. ‘I was desperate and my maid told me you could see the future. You told her that she would meet a tall, dark man and that she would live happily ever after with many fine sons to make her old age comfortable.’

‘And so she will,’ Balthasar said. ‘She will look for tall men from now on when she dispenses her favours and tall strong men are better surely than small, skinny ones. I always say dark, because I find that women in general prefer dark men to ones with carrots for hair.’ He waited for her smile.

‘But you cannot tell the future?’ she said, with a sigh.

‘I can tell the future, but you wouldn’t want to take part in that ritual,’ he told her. ‘I can call spirits to me and at a price they will tell me what you want to know. But they always tell the truth. Most people don’t want their future, they want a happy story. No one’s future is all roses and if they knew the thorns in advance, who would even bother to get up in the morning? I could tell you your future now and you could make it yours or not as you chose.’

‘What is my future, then?’ the woman said. ‘My present, and I give this information to you as a gift is that I am kept by a man of Cambridge, a rich and powerful man, who likes to hit women. His wife he will not touch, and so he hits me in her place. When we met, he told me he loved me, so in that you may well be right. For a while, he kept his needs at bay and we had a child. When she died without a breath being taken, I turned to him and he punched me in the face. And this has been his habit from then on. Tell me my future, that he is not in it, or I shall go to the banks of the Cam tonight and make my future as short as I can.’

Balthasar Gerard was a man who lived on the edge. He had his future written in stone and he would not change a moment of it, thorns and all. But sometimes even an Egyptian needs a rose or two. He leaned forward and reached for her hand. When she gave it to him, he clasped it in both his own. ‘Here is your future, then,’ he said to her.

And so he added his Rose to the company, and the three Egyptian women became four.

Kit Marlowe had had dealings with the curmudgeonly groom at Hobson’s Stables before and so he walked in prepared for the usual cut and thrust of non sequitur which seemed to be the unavoidable precursor to hiring a horse. Ignoring the poor spavined thing by the door, he walked into the fetid warmth of the building, calling for attention.

The groom lurched out of an empty stall, the sound of giggling in his wake. He was fumbling fruitlessly with the front of his hose, pulling down his groom’s smock to hide his embarrassment.

‘Please don’t trouble on my account,’ Marlowe told him. ‘I just want to hire a horse.’ He caught the man’s glance towards the door and stopped him with a raised hand. ‘Not that one,’ he said. ‘I don’t know how far I will need to ride, but certainly further than that poor thing could carry me. I need a mount that can carry me far and fast.’

An outburst of more giggling from the stall made the groom blush under his stable grime.

‘I’m sure she doesn’t mean it unkindly,’ Marlowe told the man. ‘You are clearly needed elsewhere, so let’s be quick. What do you have for me tonight?’

The groom knew Marlowe as a more than competent horseman and also, in recent times, a heavy tipper. So he was torn. ‘There’s the Wasp,’ he said, uncertainly. He didn’t usually hire out the Wasp for long loans; she was always back in the stable within the hour, led by her bruised and muddied hirer, demanding all sorts of compensation and threatening Messrs Hobson with the wrath of God.

‘The Wasp! Ideal for my purposes. But, Harry, there is a possibility I won’t be able to ride her back. I may have to send word to you as to where I have left her. Would that suit Master Hobson?’

‘Nothing much suits Master Hobson,’ the groom said. ‘You’ll have to leave a large deposit.’

Both men waited for the giggling, but the woman appeared to have fallen asleep as there was nothing from the vacant stall.

‘I have gold here,’ Marlowe said. ‘I’ll leave the full value of the mare and if she comes back to you, you are to give the money to Tom Colwell of Corpus Christi. Is that fair?’

‘Fair enough, Master Marlowe,’ Harry said, stuffing the scholar’s sovereigns into his purse. ‘Where are you off to, may I ask?’

‘East of the Sun, west of the Moon, Harry, for all I know. But I will try to return the Wasp; I know how fond you are of her. Don’t trouble yourself. I’ll saddle her myself.’

‘That’s very decent of you, Master Marlowe,’ Harry said. ‘She fetched me a nasty one the last time she was out. Constable Fludd had her for an hour or so.’

Marlowe laughed. ‘Now, that wasn’t kind, Harry, was it? Constable Fludd is no horseman, as all of Cambridge knows. What did he need a horse for?’ As they spoke, he was pulling wisps of hay from the manger at his shoulder and packing it into a net. He was pretty sure that his quarry would be equipped with horse fodder enough, but the Wasp was a picky eater and all the more bad tempered if she got hungry. Better to be safe than sorry.

‘He didn’t say, but everyone knows he’s off after the Egyptians. He’s to make sure they leave England, or his job is forfeit.’

Marlowe nodded. Another complication for his journey would be avoiding Fludd, then. The Constable was a fine fellow in many ways, but falling in with any kind of subterfuge was probably not his strongest talent. Disguise was an option, but Marlowe was too vain to change his appearance much. He didn’t mind wearing a scholar’s fustian, but he was happier in the clothes he was wearing for the journey. And he certainly wasn’t going to shave his beard or cut his hair again, not for Francis Walsingham or the Queen herself. So he would have to avoid Fludd or face him down if he named him in the wrong company.