Perfect Shadows

chapter 6

Nicholas Skeres was pimping for several doxies, the eldest a raddled forty, the youngest no more than fourteen. He approached me as I lounged against the wall of the shabby dockside tavern, and began trying to induce me to make use of them. The passing years had not been kind to him, I noted. His muscle had run to fat, his matted hair was thinner, greyer, and alive with vermin, as was the ratty beard that failed to cover his sagging jowls. I merely shrugged and turned away to continue my conversation with one of the lads frequenting the place, but that was enough to let an astute pander guess where my interests lay. He wandered off, but watched me speculatively as I later left the crowded room.

More than three years had passed since we left England. I had had a surfeit of traveling, longing to return to my native land and to embark upon my overdue revenge, so we had returned to Blackavar, leased to us for an indeterminate length of time. I had been well coached in the royal role of Geoffrey’s younger brother, our presentation at court being imminent, but vengeance drove me to my old haunts, some of the more disreputable taverns and inns of London. At Geoffrey’s request I prowled incognito, for, he said, while such disreputable occupations were not uncommon in royal younger brothers, as he had reason to know, they were still an embarrassment. Within three months I had succeeded in tracing the first of my murderers.

It was several nights later that I returned to Skeres’ den. I caught him eyeing me, and gave the lout a good look at the heavy purse I carried. The ugly man drew a thin, pretty youth into a dark corner, speaking to him earnestly, gesturing towards me, the mysterious man with the heavy purse. The boy looked defiant, then scared, finally nodding in apparent resignation before making his way through the smoky room. His invitation to entertain me was given sulkily and obviously under duress, but I feigned not to notice and followed the young man from the inn. Lige, Elijah Lyly, as he had introduced himself, explained that the dark and twisting alley was a short cut to his lodgings and drew me after him into the darkness.

“This is not the way to your lodgings, is it, Elijah?” I said softly, turning the starveling boy to face me. I had not fed in almost a week and the awareness of his pulsing blood was all but overpowering. “I will not hurt you,” I breathed, and drew the young man into a kiss. Lyly resisted, but only for a moment, then the fascination overtook him and he relaxed—I had learned my lessons well. My teeth found the vein and his sweet blood filled my mouth. I forced myself to take but a little, then withdrew, speaking to the dazed youth in a low and lulling murmur.

The sounds of pursuit echoed in the alley’s mouth, and I turned to face the hounds, placing young Lyly safely behind me. Skeres and two companions spread out to flank me in the small yard at the alley’s end. One man, a ruffian called Thomas Cully, laughed and showed a rusty blade, while the other, a stranger to me, hefted a short but weighty club. Skeres stood back and set the lantern he carried carefully on the ground then motioned the other two forward. He leant against the wall to watch the fun.

I lazily drew the Italian snaphaunce pistol from beneath my cloak and leveled it at Cully’s head. The two stopped and glanced uncertainly at Skeres, who cursed softly at the sudden appearance of the pistol. Too swiftly for mortal eyes to follow, I smashed the gun’s long barrel against Cully’s skull, dropping him, and caught the second knave with the rebound before aiming the pistol at Skeres. His face pale under the dirt, he tried to plead with me, but fell silent at an abrupt movement of the pistol.

“Elijah,” I said softly, “go to sleep until I bid you wake,” and Skeres’ eyes widened to see the youth close his eyes obediently, although he remained standing against the alley wall.

“And now, Nick, it is time for the reckoning,” I murmured. I pulled off the eye-patch I wore and turned so the lantern light fell on the puckered, purple scar. “Do you not know me, Nick? No? Marlowe, who paid so many reckonings for you, whom you repaid with treachery and murder?” I ignored the strangled sound Skeres made. “Yes, I died, but I yet live, or at least after a fashion. How?” Keeping the pistol level, I pulled the boy to me, sinking my pointed canine teeth into his throat again, my gaze never straying from Skeres, as he watched in horror. I raised my head and licked the blood from my lips just as Skeres, with a cry, hurled himself at the alley mouth. I dropped the pistol and was on him before he had gone two steps, catching him by the thin, greasy hair. I had scooped Cully’s knife from the ground in passing, and I slashed it against the terrified man’s throat, tearing through vein and artery, windpipe and gullet, with one brutal motion. I coolly stepped out of the way of the fountaining blood, retrieved my pistol, and stood watching in grim satisfaction as Skeres pawed at his throat in a futile attempt to staunch the flow.

“Be thankful, Nick,” I hissed. “Yours is a quick death. The others will not be so fortunate.” There was a protesting gurgle from Skeres, and he died. I turned to Lyly. “Elijah,” I said,” come with me.” At the mouth of the alley I woke the young man, after admonishing him to remember nothing of the night’s encounters.

A few nights later I struck up a fresh acquaintance with the lad, and eventually found him a place with the Lord Chamberlain’s players. There was no inquiry into the death of Nicholas Skeres, so I assumed that his two fellows, upon awaking to find the corpse and the bloody blade, had been at some pains to conceal the deed.



Not long after Skeres’ demise a letter came for me. I took it to Geoffrey to have it read. It proved to be a cunningly written invitation from Robert Cecil, to meet with him in order to discuss matters of “mutual interest and benefit”. Since it was well known that Cecil had a desire to spread his, and England’s, influence onto the continent, it did not take much thought to see what he was carefully not saying—he wanted to recruit an agent to act in his interest in the east. Geoffrey accompanied me to the meeting, much to Cecil’s dismay, though he tried manfully to cover it.

“Prince Geofri, Prince Kryštof, please, be seated. Will you take wine?” He signaled the servant who stood nearby and soon we were comfortably sitting near the fire. Cecil’s glance strayed to my face, trying to read me whenever he thought that neither of us were looking. He was a small, scholarly man, as brilliant in intellect as he was twisted in body, and he must have realized from my lack of expression and the satisfied look on Geoffrey’s face that things had somehow gone awry. That realization was confirmed when Geoffrey pulled the letter from his doublet. “That letter was meant for your brother, your grace,” he said stiffly, and Geoffrey nodded.

“Yes. However my brother Kryštof can neither read nor write, not his own language, nor any other,” Geoffrey answered the implied accusation bluntly, ignoring, as did I, Cecil’s shocked look, and offering no explanation. “He brought this to me that I might read it to him, but, had he been able to read it himself, be assured that he would still have brought it to me. My brother will not be suborned, Lord Robert. If you have matters of ‘interest and benefit’ to him, they are so to me also.”

“Your grace, I meant no offense, and I implore you to take none. I had not wished to trouble your grace with what might after all be but a trifling matter, and I had no idea of your brother’s . . .inability,” Cecil said smoothly, trying to cover his confusion. He was plainly appalled; it had obviously never occurred to him that so elegant a prince as I might be unable to read. It was also obvious that that incapacity, moreover, rendered me useless for any purpose Cecil might have had in mind. He seemed to realize that his thoughts were abroad upon his face, and sighed, schooling his features to impassivity before continuing his business.

We parted amicably enough, but from that night the rumors about us, and about me in particular, took on a decidedly baneful tone. Just as the rumors reached their peak, we were invited by one Lord Haggard to finally be presented at court upon the occasion of the knighting of Thomas Walsingham at his country house, Scadbury, at Chislehurst. We were pleased to accept.