‘Kit’s writing a new play,’ Bianca says admiringly.
‘Is Kit really?’
‘It’s about a doctor, too.’
‘Oh, a comedy.’
‘Nicholas!’
‘In truth, it’s a tragedy,’ says Marlowe.
‘You’re telling me.’
Bianca glares at him. ‘Did you not sleep well last night? You’ve a contrary mood upon you this morning, Nicholas.’
He raises his hands, fingers spread, as if to make amends. ‘I’m sorry, but if Master Kit here had the slightest experience of the College of Physicians, he’d need to pen a comedy to stop himself taking a torch to the place.’
‘It’s about a physician named Faustus,’ says Marlowe. ‘He makes a pact with Lucifer: all the mysteries of the world revealed to him alone – but one day the Devil will come calling for the reckoning.’
Nicholas thinks, I might have made a bargain like that, if it had been offered to me – before Eleanor died.
‘These good gentlemen have sought our help, Nicholas,’ says Bianca proudly. ‘They need somewhere to try out their acts.’
‘What’s wrong with the Rose theatre?’
‘Master Henslowe has the carpenters in,’ says Burridge.
Marlowe gives him a laboured smile, as though Nicholas is too much the country greenhorn to comprehend the playwright’s art. ‘We need to judge if the invocations play well.’
‘Invocations are not easy things to present, Dr Shelby,’ explains Burridge. ‘Ineptly done, they invite ridicule. Too forcefully, and you’re a blasphemer. Too accurately, and – well, who knows what spiritual dangers will ensue? As the Rose was closed to us, we thought a suitable tavern would suffice.’ His purple-veined jowls crease as he smiles. ‘And thanks be, we have found one! Mistress Merton has been the very goddess Fortuna herself! Dear madam, you have sped to our aid like Perseus to Andromeda.’
Nicholas wonders if all player-managers speak like this.
‘So here we are!’ says Marlowe brightly.
‘Do you object?’ Bianca asks, noticing the look on Nicholas’s face. ‘Don’t tell me you’ve come over all Puritan.’
‘It’s not my tavern,’ Nicholas says, feeling like a fool. ‘But you know how gullible some people around here can be. Look what Ned said about you last summer: that you were a witch and flew around at night in the shape of a bat. Half of Southwark believed him.’
‘That was before Ned got to know me,’ she says pointedly. ‘And he was in his cups. He didn’t really mean it.’
Nicholas shrugs. He can hear by her voice that she quite enjoys the notoriety. ‘If you think it wise, go ahead. It’s just that there are some superstitious souls around here. It doesn’t take much–’
Marlowe shakes his head. His eyes gleam. To Nicholas, they are the eyes of a precocious child who’s realized he’s just got away with deceiving an adult and has thus come to the conclusion that deceit is easy. His voice oozes condescension. ‘Mercy, Dr Shelby, don’t be afeared. It’s only play-acting. We’re not planning to conjure up real demons! That would be against the law.’
‘Why did Finney leave so suddenly?’ asks Samuel Wylde, closing the pages of his Ovid.
‘I don’t think he favoured country living,’ replies Tanner Bell, lounging in the corner of the room, carving a stick with his knife. He pauses to brush a rebellious shank of hair away from his right eye, then absent-mindedly pushes it back into the unruly brown mop that overhangs his brow. ‘He missed the excitement of London.’ He gives the stick a puzzled look. ‘Though why the bastard had to steal my coat, I really don’t know.’ Tanner’s face sags with the hurt of loss – and not just for the coat. ‘It was my brother’s. It was Dorney’s. I know it didn’t fit me, but I’d have grown into it. Now I have nothing at all to remember him by.’
‘Perhaps the Professor scared him off,’ says Samuel Wylde. ‘I could have put his mind at rest, if he’d asked.’
There’s no doubting the Swiss doctor’s methods can appear a little alarming, thinks Samuel. All those invocations from books written in a language that only he can decipher; the sulphurous distillations that make the nostrils rebel; the consulting of almanacs that list planets and stars Samuel has never even heard of…
‘He had no cause to be afraid,’ Samuel continues. ‘Dr Arcampora says my falling sickness stems not from any demonic agency, but from a confusion of my own thoughts.’
‘I don’t think Finney cared much for thoughts – confused or otherwise.’
‘But I don’t like to think of him being afeared, Tanner.’
‘Don’t fret. I told him when he arrived that your fallings had nothing to do with the Devil. It’s not our fault if he didn’t listen.’
‘According to Dr Arcampora, my paroxysms come from within my own mind. It’s certainly more plausible than the remedies prescribed by the other doctors my father sent: don’t eat eels, don’t wear black, sleep only on goatskin…’
‘I’m sure he’s right,’ says Tanner. ‘Being a physician, he must have read at least a thousand books. Perhaps more. Perhaps he’s read every book in Switzerland – maybe even the world. He can read languages I’ve never even heard of.’
‘He says if I’m to have calm thoughts – thoughts that won’t lead to seizures – I must become immune to the fearsome ones: the ones that cause other people to have nightmares.’
‘Finney’s nightmare was being stuck here in the countryside. We’ll do without him. Now, back to your Ovid, or Dr Arcampora will be displeased.’
Samuel takes up the poetry book again. Arcampora’s methods make perfect sense to him now. And no doubt, when the Professor has time and the inclination, he’ll be just as able to solve the mystery of why Finney disappeared without a single word of goodbye.
‘I don’t like what these players of Marlowe’s are up to,’ Ned Monkton confides to Nicholas the next day, shortly after the noonday cacophony of the city’s church bells. The two men have been manhandling casks in and out of the brew-house most of the morning. Nicholas can feel the sweat cooling in the hollow between his shoulder-blades. Not being of Ned’s build, he hasn’t had much energy left over to take an interest in Kit Marlowe and his two companions.
‘Master Kit says not to worry, Ned. It’s just play-acting. Something to do with a fellow who asks the Devil for all the knowledge in the world, and offers his soul in payment. It wouldn’t be my idea of an afternoon’s entertainment, but then I’m not a playwright.’
‘Well, there’s more than a few people round here would call it blasphemy.’ Ned wipes his brow with one huge forearm. ‘I saw a couple of the watermen watching from the taproom window a while ago. You should have seen their faces: looked like a brace of bishops who’ve walked into a bawdy-house by mistake. Imagine that: Southwark watermen turned into Puritans by a couple of actors.’
Marlowe’s voice reaches them effortlessly from across the yard. It seems to Nicholas that when he raises his voice, the Canterbury cobbler’s son speaks louder than the London playwright: ‘You’re meant to be summonin’ up Mephistopheles, Robbie, not stirrin’ pottage! The lines are: “There is no chief but Beelzebub to whom Faustus doth ded’cate ’imself. This word damnation terrifies not ’im.” Have you got that? It’s “damnation”, Robbie. Not “Dalmatian”. He’s tryin’ to summon up a demon, not a fucking dog!’
Ned grunts contemptuously. ‘“No chief but Beelzebub”? That should have the weaker constitutions amongst the audience fainting dead away. It’s not right to make light of such matters.’