God in Hell, I wish I knew what wad going on. Who does any of this benefit? Not Essex, not Southampton. Baines?
There had been eight or ten robed men, he thought, although he’d only had a glimpse of them. There was no way one lone Elf‑knight and sometime poet could manage so many, but Walsingham’s London residence wasn’t far from Blackfriars, and there were Tom, and Ben, and Edmund too– if Edmund can be trusted. If Ben is not a member of two conspiracies at once.
Kit shrugged at his own suspicions, and pushed through the Darkling Glass.
It wasn’t as bad as he’d feared. Edmund–obviously already nervous in the presence of a knight–stood blinking by the window as Kit appeared in the center of the room, and Jonson broke off midsentence, glowering, reaching across a belly grown as mountainous as his self‑importance to grasp his swordhilt. But Tom turned away from the two of them and smiled. “Welcome back,” he said.
Jonson grudgingly released the handle of his weapon as Edmund found his voice. “T‑tom Marlowe? What sorcery–”
“No time to explain,” Kit said, his eyes on Tom Walsingham. “Does it seem strange to you that Will should be taken so ill yesterday, immediately afterhe gave the performance he had to give to suit the Promethean’s plans?”
“God,” Tom said. “Yes. Essex rides–”
“I know–”
“–What must we do?”
Kit swallowed and glanced from Ben to Edmund. Edmund looked at Jonson, who nodded. “Baines is at Blackfriars,” Kit said. “With eight or ten magicians. Whatever happens, happens now–”
“And thou mean’st to interrupt?”
“Aye, Sir Thomas. If I can request a few able‑bodied men.”
“There’s that in this room,” Jonson said. “All this keeping secrets is hard on the use of hirelings.”
“That it is.”
“I’ve a few sturdy souls about the house who would suffice. Kit–”
Edmund glanced over his shoulder once, at the door into Will’s sickroom. His head snapped back at the name Tom used, and his eyes widened. Kit bowed, his arms spread wide under his cloak. “At your service, Master Shakespeare. There’s still no time to explain. What seems to be the problem, Sir Thomas?”
“The sturdiest of those souls is one Ingrim Frazier.”
Kit’s stomach clenched. From loose readiness for action to seasick horror in a second, but he gritted his teeth and kept his voice level. “As he’s earned your forgiveness, Tom, I’ll live with it. But–” But I want to talk to him first.Except there was no time for recriminations now, was there? Not with Will’s life and Elizabeth’s crown on the line. “I’ll endure,” he said, and ended whatever comment Tom might have made next with an abrupt flip of his hand.
Edmund seemed still at a loss. He tapped his fingers on the window ledge, his voice level and calm. “Will’s told me a bit of these poet‑wars, and that they have been quiet of late. His sickness is related?”
“To these sorcerous doings? Aye.”
“Then I will come.” He paused. “If I may consider your presence an invitation.”
Kit laughed and turned to follow Tom as Tom moved toward the door. “Stuff your Warwickshire politeness, Ted. It’s time to go to war.”
It wasn’t any easier to turn his back on Ingrim than he’d thought it would be. And Ingrim was keeping a weary weather eye on Kit as well, and Tom’s broad shoulders between them. Kit thought, if Frazier could manage it, he might have turned invisible, or hidden himself behind Ben Jonson’s bulk completely.
Ben, bless him for a foul‑tempered young mule, was having none of it. He walked alongside Kit, an outward show of alliance that left Kit puzzled and looking for the trap, but the possibility existed that Jonson saw in Kit a more likely ally than Walsingham. Or possibly he just didn’t care to run shoulder to shoulder with the servants, and wanted the buffer of Kit’s velvet doublet and hooded cloak.
Kit sighed and turned away from another sidelong glance of Frazier’s. And the whole world knows Kit Marley lived. Thou couldst just have hired a herald to cry it through the streets, Kit.
Seven men, including two servants whose names Kit had failed to overhear, walked swiftly west on Cheapside, which had begun to bustle again in the wake of Essex’s dramatic ride. It didn’t matter, to Kit’s way of thinking; it wouldn’t be long before Essex was riding back again. He overheard talk in the crowd: witnesses reported that Essex, due to a delay over choosing his outfit for the revolution, failed to prevent Sir Robert Cecil from publicly proclaiming the insurgents traitors, and that the people of London likewise failed to rise and make Essex their King.
The crowds made way for the seven afoot; Tom’s height and Ben’s sheer bulk were impressive, and Kit expected they all had the look of men with intention.
They were almost in sight of Newgate (‑where Kit had once spent an unpleasant two weeks, detained on charge of murder) when their route turned south; in a matter of minutes they drew up under an overhang a few hundred yards from the playhouse. Kit stripped his glove off his right hand carefully, lest it interfere with his grip on his rapier.
“Well,” Jonson said in his incongruous tenor, “time’s a‑wasting – ”
“Aye,” Kit answered. “Shall we be clever about it?”
“You’re too clever by half, if you ask me – ”
“Which no one did.”
“Gentlemen.” Tom didn’t bother to glare, but Kit subsided like a chastised schoolboy and Jonson fell silent too. They both had cause to know that tone. “The time for subtlety is past,” Tom continued, and drew a snaphaunce pistol from his belt. I wish we had Will or Dick here. It would give a little more credence to the story that we shot ten men for looting if one of us had somewhat to do with the property.”
Kit shrugged. “Forgiveness is cheaper than permission. And we’re unlikely to shoot more than one or two at the most unless you’re handing out petards, Tom.”
“Aye,” Tom answered. “Sadly, I’ve but the one. Come on then; let’s bloody our hands.”
It wasn’t exactly a charge: more a concerted rush. Jonson reached the door first and–to Kit’s surprise–merely tried the handle. Tom, nervy as a colt, jumped when the hinges creaked, and Ben stopped with the portal open no more than a quarter inch. “Dammit, Ben – ”
“We’ll be silhouetted against the street when we open the door,” Jonson said with a soldier’s calm. He braced the door with his toe to hold it in place while he drew, cocked, and primed his own pistol. “We have to enter quickly, divided to each side, and fan out in case they have firearms within.”
Edmund shot him a glance with a question behind it, and Ben shook his head. “Fought in the Low Countries,” he murmured. “Ready, lad?”
“Aye.”
“Good. Stay at my shoulder. Keep moving. Master Marlowe? Sir Thomas?”
Kit nodded tightly, not sad to see Jonson take control. As much as he bragged on his brains, Kit thought, drawing his sword, Jonson was very much in his element as a man of action.
“Go, Ben,” Tom said over the hammering of Kit’s heart, and Jonson shoved the door open and went in, head down and shoulders hunched like a charging bull. The rest rushed through behind, slipping aside like court dancers into the dimly lit interior. Somehow, Kit wound up pressed against the wall beside Frazier, shoulder to shoulder, but neither had a glance for the other now as their eyes strained into uncandled dimness, searching for a flicker of movement that might reveal the shift of a pistol or a blade. To Kit’s otherwisesight, the figures of any conjuring sorcerers should have stood out plainly, but he saw nothing in that breathless moment but a few dust motes hung on a crack of light.