Witch Hammer (23 page)

‘Whereas . . .?’

‘Whereas Nat Sawyer does a particularly good sketch with a balloon and a stuffed parrot, I understand.’

‘Ah, comedy.’ Cawdray smiled, sipping his wine. ‘My wife’s favourite.’

‘Given what has happened,’ Marlowe said, ‘it’s perhaps a blessing she’s not with you.’

He saw the man’s face darken. ‘No,’ he said, ‘not so much a blessing as a curse.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Marlowe said, suspecting that he had committed a rather major faux pas. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘My wife was taken from me, Master Marlowe,’ Cawdray said quietly, looking thoughtfully into his goblet of wine, ‘by her own hand, I fear.’

Marlowe looked at the man. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. There was nothing else he could say in these circumstances.

Cawdray crossed to the flame-lit window and looked down at the huddled figure of Reginald Scot curled up in the hay of the yard below and still tied to his cart. ‘She was to have had a child,’ he said, looking now at his reflection in the glass. ‘Something . . . and I don’t know what . . . turned her mind.’ He turned to Marlowe. ‘So she killed herself and her baby.’

‘You blame her for that?’ Marlowe asked.

‘No.’ Cawdray shook his head. ‘I blame God, the Devil, myself . . . anyone but her. People were very kind. She drowned herself in the lake in the grounds of our house. They said she had slipped in, swooned . . . but they didn’t see the letter she left. No one did, save me.’ He laid a hand over his heart. ‘I carry it here, always.’

Marlowe could think of nothing to say to comfort this man, whose grief was so raw it seemed to fill the room.

‘She had said we must fill in the lake before the baby came. So that the grounds would be safe.’ He smiled. ‘I still filled it in, you know, and sometimes, when I first wake in the morning, I am glad I did. To make it safe for the children.’ He looked up at Marlowe. ‘Most people smile at this point, Master Marlowe. They think this story has a happy ending, that I married again and filled my house with children, sons and daughters. But you say nothing.’

‘I am a poet,’ Marlowe said. ‘A playwright. A scholar. I know that life has more sad endings than happy ones. The tragedies get bigger audiences than the comedies. I am so very sorry for your loss.’

‘I wish I could find someone who I could blame, you know,’ Cawdray said, almost to himself. ‘Revenge is sweet, or so they say.’

‘Oh, yes,’ Marlowe said. ‘Perhaps I should have said: the revenge tragedies get the biggest audiences of all. And now, if you’ll excuse me, I must check the prisoner before I go to bed. Goodnight, Master Cawdray.’

‘And to you, Master Marlowe.’

‘Hasn’t this gone far enough?’ Reginald Scot wanted to know. He ached in every limb and his wrists were rubbed raw by the ropes that had tied him to Martin’s wagon. His left sole had parted company with its uppers and the straw he was now sitting on was sharp and scratchy.

‘You are a murderer, Master Scot,’ Marlowe said loudly, keeping up the pretence as he sat down next to him. Then he added, in a whisper, ‘Sorry, Reginald, but it’s paying dividends already, our little subterfuge.’

‘Is it?’

‘Well, no.’ Marlowe had to confess. ‘But it will. Joseph knows who killed Ned.’

‘He does? He doesn’t strike me as a man who knows his arse from a hole in the ground.’ Reginald Scot was not an unkind man or one who usually resorted to obscene language but he had been sorely tried and he was not in the mood to be pleasant when there was a chance to be otherwise.

‘A fair assessment, Reginald, I’ll give you that. I put it down to a lifetime of drink and speaking other people’s words. But it is locked in there, in whatever passes for his poor, befuddled old brain. God save us from turning into old actors, eh?’

‘God, Kit?’ Scot raised an eyebrow. ‘That’s an odd notion, coming from you.’

‘Is it?’

Scot rested his aching back against the wagon’s wheel. It was hard but it gave him support. ‘I’ve been with you a few days now,’ he said, ‘all told. When men are afraid – as we all were at the stones – their old instincts show. Half these people are of the old religion – Shaxsper, Joyce Clopton, Boscastle and his people. They all, to a man and woman, crossed themselves in fear. But you,’ he said, ‘a scholar of Corpus Christi and a man destined for the church, as I understand it, you did not. You’ve left your God behind somewhere, haven’t you?’

Marlowe smiled. ‘Along with your friends the witches.’

‘Ah, no,’ Scot said, stony-faced. ‘They are no friends of mine. Tell me, Kit, what’s the date?’

‘The date? I don’t know. The twenty-ninth, I think. Why do you ask?’

‘Lammas,’ Scot said. ‘Lammastide.’

‘August the first,’ Marlowe said.

‘Shaxsper and company are of the old religion,’ Scot said, ‘but . . . my friends the witches, as you put it . . . are of an older faith still. They worship the horned god.’

‘The Devil,’ Marlowe said.

‘The Devil, Satan, the Great Beast, Prince of Darkness. He has many names. And below him there are sixty-six infernal princes, each of whom command six thousand, six hundred and sixty-six legions of Hell. Each legion has six thousand, six hundred and sixty-six demons. Add that lot together and you have half the population of the world. Saint Athenius once wrote “The air is filled with demons”. They are all around us, Kit.’

‘I thought you didn’t believe any of this claptrap.’

‘Hocus pocus,’ Scot said, ‘the rubbish the witches chant. But what is that but
hoc est corpus
, this is the body of Christ, which all Christians chant every Sunday at communion? Just because we don’t believe it doesn’t mean it isn’t real.’

Marlowe was impressed by this man who, bloody and sore, could still ride his hobby horse. ‘So, what are you saying?’ he asked.

‘I’m saying that, come what may, I must be back at the Rollrights by Lammastide. To the witches, it is Lugnasadh, one of their great ceremonies. They dance widdershins, sky clad under the moon and prostrate themselves before their horned god.’

‘And you want to see it?’ Marlowe nodded. The scholar in him appreciated how important it was to get things
right
. Sometimes, only personal research would do and this was not a thing to find in a library. Even though he had known some very strange librarians in his time.

‘If you remember,’ Scot said, ‘I went to Meon Hill for a new chapter to add to my book. That’s why I was there. Although I admit the arrival of your troupe rather –’ he shook his bound wrists – ‘altered the direction of my life.’

‘Why were you at Clopton?’ Marlowe asked him. ‘What has Clopton to do with your horned god?’

Scot looked at the man sitting cross-legged opposite him. ‘I thought I might find him there,’ he said.

‘And did you?’

‘No. But I found his handiwork. Lord Strange.’

Marlowe nodded. ‘The poppet.’

‘The poison poured into the man’s goblet by someone working in the Clopton kitchens. The Maiden.’

‘Who?’

‘The Maiden is the creature of the horned god. She is at once his skivvy and lover. At the Sabbat at Lugnasadh she will be the first to feel him inside her and to receive his seed which, so they say, is as cold as ice.’

‘Do you know who she is?’

Scot shook his head. ‘No,’ he said, ‘but we’ll find out if we go back to the Rollrights. That is their holy place and the coven will have been gathering for weeks now, preparing for their diabolical ceremony, for the sacrifice. They will have ridden there on toads and black horses and broomsticks.’

‘An arresting sight on the road, I would imagine.’

‘Indeed it would be. They also imagine that they stand ten feet tall and can fly over hedges and ditches, steeples if the fancy takes them. It’s the hemlock talking, of course. They rub it into the skin and it causes hallucinations. It’s very real to them.’

‘Sometimes your hops can have the same result,’ Marlowe said with a smile. ‘I’ve seen scholars in Cambridge who thought they could jump the river from a standing start.’

‘Any successes?’

‘Not as yet.’

‘And so it is with witches. Even when witnesses swear to them that they have not moved, they have an answer for it, that their god has closed their eyes, that kind of thing.’ He sighed. ‘It makes them very difficult to research properly. That’s why I want to see their Sabbat. And it’s up to you, Kit, whether I can be there or not. Given that I’m here on a charge of murder concocted by you.’

‘There are ways around that,’ Marlowe said.

‘Oh? What?’ And Scot flinched as Marlowe’s dagger scythed through the air and its razor edge sliced through the hemp around his wrists.

Scot knelt up, willing his numb feet to obey his brain and chafing his painful wrists with fingers that scarcely worked. ‘Thanks for that. What now? Do I just vanish?’

‘This Sabbat of yours,’ Marlowe said. ‘How many will be there?’

‘Thirteen, of course,’ Scot told him. ‘It is a black parody of Our Lord and his disciples. Twelve and one.’

‘The Dark One.’ Marlowe nodded. ‘Any idea who that might be?’

Scot looked puzzled. ‘I told you. The Great Beast. Beelzebub. Lord of—’

‘Yes,’ Marlowe broke in. ‘You told me
that
. But who
is
it, do you think? Who is . . . I can’t think of any other way of putting this, Reginald. You don’t really think it is the Devil, do you?’ He looked at him closely. ‘Or do you?’ He was beginning to regret cutting him loose. The man was clearly barking mad. All that research into arcana had clearly clouded his senses.

‘Oh, I see. Who
is
it? Well, I have absolutely no idea.’

‘That will be fun then, to expose him.’

Scot looked puzzled all over again. ‘Why would I want to do that?’ he asked.

‘Well, to stop him having sabbats all over the place, I would have thought. Depraving local crones, that kind of thing. It can’t be good for the morale of these villages, Reginald, to have this kind of behaviour going on. And it is, as I understand it, against the law.’

‘Of 1562, yes, but I hadn’t taken you for a prude, Kit,’ Scot said, still rubbing his wrists.

‘And you would be right,’ Marlowe said. ‘But I have seen some strange things in my life, and the fewer of them there are around, the better I like it.’

‘It is an ancient religion,’ Scot pointed out.

‘I seem to remember you mentioned sacrifice,’ Marlowe riposted.

‘Of a goat, a kid. Perhaps a lamb or calf. Not a person,’ Scot said. ‘They may talk of such things, but they wouldn’t kill a
person.
’

‘What, like no one would have killed Ned Sledd? Lord Strange? William Clopton?’

Scot looked thoughtful. ‘I see you intend to come with me. But I really don’t want to interfere, Kit.’

‘I have a compromise, Reginald,’ Marlowe offered. ‘If there is no sacrifice, no one is in danger, everyone seems to just be enjoying a roll in the hay under the moon, I agree to leave well enough alone. But, if anyone is clearly coerced, in danger . . .’

‘Then you’ll step out with your dagger?’ Scot asked. ‘Don’t forget there will be thirteen of them and only two of us. Unless you have others in mind to have tag along. I can see my covert watching is getting less likely to succeed.’

‘No, no, Reginald. I won’t spoil your spying. I do have a plan.’

‘What do you propose?’ Scot asked.

‘Help yourself to a horse,’ Marlowe suggested. ‘After mine, Simon Hayward’s is the best we have.’

‘Why . . .?’

‘I can’t ask any of Lord Strange’s Men to get involved in this,’ Marlowe said. ‘They’ve been through enough. But Masters Hayward and Cawdray have already proved they can handle themselves – and in somebody else’s fight. To be doubly sure, however, if you just happen to have ridden off on Master Hayward’s horse, it’s odds on he’ll come looking for you.’

‘Brilliant, Kit!’ Scot snapped his thumb and forefinger, quite pleased that he could still do it. ‘Wait a minute, though.’ He stopped in his tracks as realization dawned. ‘I can be hanged for horse stealing.’

Marlowe smiled at him. ‘You can be hanged for murder too, Reginald. Life can be a bitch, can’t it? Choice, choices, always choices.’

With a sigh, Scot walked off, limping only slightly, to where Hayward’s horse waited for him in its stall.

Reginald Scot was sitting on an elder stump that afternoon, his ink and paper beside him, making notes for the new chapter for his book. The hot sun had made him mellow and perhaps a little light-headed and he found himself listening to the crickets in the long grass and watching the butterflies chase each other in their spiralling flights over the fields. His senses were heightened by the heat of the day and the breathless air so that he almost thought he could see the rainbow dust flick from their wings with every beat. The words of an old folk song came into his mind with its strange, haunting tune: ‘Fly over moor and fly over mead, Fly over living and fly over dead, Fly you east or fly you west, Fly to her that loves me best.’

‘That had better be Mistress Scot, hop grower, or there’ll be Hell to pay.’

Scot shrieked and fell off his stump, ink and parchment going everywhere. He squinted up at the figure standing above him, half blotting out the sun. ‘Marlowe,’ he growled. ‘Damn you, Kit, my heart is beating fit to burst out of my chest. You could have killed me.’

‘That’s what Master Hayward planned to do until I explained the circumstances,’ Marlowe said and waved an arm to the two horsemen sitting on their animals on the slope of the hill.

‘I didn’t hear a thing,’ Scot said. ‘How did three men on horses creep up on me so quietly?’

Marlowe looked north into the hazy distance. ‘Isn’t that Meon Hill over there?’ he said. ‘I think you’ll find that explains it all.’

And Scot threw his book at him. Rather pointedly, Simon Hayward dismounted and strode towards the trees, patting the rump and shoulder of his stolen horse before untethering it and hauling it away. ‘Just for the record,’ he grunted to Scot, ‘
my
horse. You can have this bloody bag of bones I’ve been jolted around on all morning.
And
you can pick up the cost of the hire.’

Richard Cawdray led his horse forward by the bridle and helped Scot up. ‘I hope this isn’t some wild-goose chase, Master Scot,’ he said. ‘Marlowe here says you may need our help.’