Perfect Shadows

chapter 13

Frizer’s inn at Eltham was easy to distinguish, with its air of disorderly menace. I feigned ignorance of the stir my entrance caused. Though raffishly dressed, I appeared well-to-do in that company. I requested and was served a cup of sack, and settled in to observe. By midnight the crowd had thinned to several men on the far side of the room, and a sullen, lank-haired woman dabbing at the tables with a rag. Frizer had certainly come down in the world, his prim parson’s demeanor shed with his vaulting ambition. He was scruffy and down at the heels, his beard untrimmed and his hair unkempt. He detached himself from his fellows and made his way to the bench where I waited, pausing long enough to snap at the woman, who flicked a quick and frightened look at me, then fled from the room.

“Will you be wantin’ a bed?” Frizer growled. He stood with his meaty hands on his hips, looming over me. I smiled, and Frizer’s frown deepened. “Too good for an honest inn, be you?”

“Not at all. Mayhap too good for this one.” By ones and twos the others were leaving. When we were alone, Frizer reached down and grasped the front of my doublet, and I let him pull me to my feet. Before my renascence Frizer had had the advantage of me in inches, but now we were eye to eye.

“Well, now, if y’hand over your purse, perhaps I can persuade my friends out there not to lay hands on ye.” Frizer’s breath stank of cheap wine, and for a moment I sagged, overcome by the memory of my murder, of being helpless in this man’s merciless hands. Frizer laughed, thinking me faint with fear, and shook me. Then he was being held by both wrists, and slammed down onto the bench, while I bent over him, feeling my lips twist into a feral smile.

Holding his crossed wrists easily in one hand, I smashed the heel of the other up under his chin, knocking his head against the wall with stunning force. As he slumped, I caught him again, cracking a blow across his cheek. Calmly I lowered the lax hands, and just as calmly bent his right thumb back until it broke. He came to with a howl, that doubled in volume as the left thumb was broken, then dwindled to a whimper. “Why? Why me?”

“As you’ve asked, Ingram, I shall tell you. Do you remember Deptford, Ingram? Eleanor Bull’s house? Do you boast and brag about getting away with murder that sultry, summery day?”

“M-m-marlowe? N-n-no! Dead! Dead and buried!”

“So I am often told. I think not. But you will be. You may thank Sir Thomas Walsingham that I do not kill you outright, and if I hear that you have troubled him again in anyway, I shall kill you anyway. Or if I should hear further tales of travelers molested after leaving your inn.

“You see, it was I cut Nick Skeres throat for him, Ingram,” I said, and laughed. “You should have seen his blood spouting through his fumbling, useless hands,” I continued, pausing a moment to lick my lips, and Frizer shuddered. “Do you remember when you so kindly told me what I could expect from a traitor’s death? I shall not be so refined with you, but the results will be the same. You will be begging me to die, before it’s done, scrabbling through your guts with your own two hands. Oh, not tonight, but one day. One night you will see me again, and you will know then that I have come to collect the reckoning.

“You could cheat me, of course. If you bandy the tale of this night about, you will certainly be locked up as a lunatic. I would still kill you, but it would have to be quickly done. Not that you wouldn’t beg for it, after you’d been locked up in Bedlam for a time.” I stepped back, poised in case he should attack, but the man just sat there, rigid, slack-jawed and beginning to drool. A touch at my arm whirled me around, and I almost struck her before I realized it was woman I had seen earlier.

“My lord, you best go out the back. They be waiting for you in the yard,” she said, her voice dull and colorless. She looked down at Frizer with apathetic eyes. “It’s the apoplexy; he’s had small fits before. One day, God willing, he’ll die of it.” I was surprised at the venom in her voice, until I noticed the bruises on her arms. She hastily rolled the sleeves of her shift down to cover them. Shyly, she offered me a half-smile, and I thought that at one time she must have been quite pretty. Almost without volition I drew her to me. She resisted for only a second before sliding into my embrace. I left her, dazed from the pleasure of my feeding, there on the bench beside her husband.

As I stepped from the front door of the inn, I spotted my adversaries hidden around the inn-yard. Five of them, two armed with swords, two with cudgels, and one with what appeared to be a length of stout chain. They couldn’t know that I had seen them, and I strode through the courtyard to the tumble-down shack that served as a stable. They moved then, but not as silently as they believed. Before any of them could reach me, I had drawn my sword, and stood smiling at them over the length of it. Within seconds all were bloodied and the two swordsmen were down, one with a death wound. The others fled. I laughed aloud, retrieved my horse and rode into the night towards Blackavar, well pleased with my night’s work.

I heard there was great wonder the next day in Eltham, when Mistress Frizer told how the two swordsmen had quarreled and fought each other. The survivor agreed with her tale, for to dispute it would be to admit a murderous assault upon the one-eyed stranger.



We had taken a house in Chelsey when the court had moved to Whitehall, and I attended the Queen every night. To forestall further trouble with the court bravos I challenged three of them, one after the other, to an exhibition of swordsmanship, and her majesty bade us perform before the assembled court. The third man was Henry Wriothesley, the young Earl of Southampton, handsome, arrogant and attractive. . . .

Southampton’s dark auburn hair almost brushed the floor as he bent to retrieve his rapier. “This was no fair trial,” he said, with a sulky bad grace. “If you were right-handed—”

“The sinister troubles you, my lord? No matter,” I said, and switched my rapier to my right hand, on my blind side. There was a muttering among the onlookers, and the earl had the grace to look abashed as I saluted him with my blade. The second bout took but little longer than the first. Even as his sword touched the floor, Southampton was already striding away. I bowed to his rigid, retreating back, then turned to accept the applause of the court. I picked up the earl’s fallen blade and gave it to a passing servant, instructing him to give it into the earl’s hand. The hilt had still been warm from his grip—I seemed to feel that warmth on my palm for a longtime after, and mightily regretted offending the elegant, intelligent, and above all, handsome young man.

“My lord, I was told to give you this,” Jehan said one evening not long after, handing me a folded piece of paper.” He said you’d be able to read it,” he added in answer to my quizzical look, and went to shake out the clothing I would wear that night. I raised myself on one elbow and unfolded the letter, smoothing it in the light of the candle that stood on the table near the bed. When I saw the contents I chuckled. I could read this, absolutely—the paper contained a series of drawings. St. Paul’s cathedral was unmistakably rendered, with its blocky tower, its spire lost to a fire some years past. Next was a waxing quarter-moon and abroad-faced clock, its hand pointing to ten. An earring pierced the page where the signature should be, a good-sized orient pearl suspended from a sturdy gold hoop. My stomach lurched as I recognized it: I had worn it the day I died.

I rose from the bed and let Jehan dress me. Nicolas had said that Poley had been given the earring as his pay for watching the door as I was murdered. Though I had been unable to discover his whereabouts, it looked as though Poley had found me out. I frowned; little Robin was soon going to be one very dead spy. The moon was waxing now, and the quarter would be in four nights time. I idly wondered if the clock face meant ten in the morning? If so, Poley would have a long wait. I slipped the thin silver hoop from my earlobe and set the pearl in its place.

The night of the quarter-moon I dressed plainly in wool and linen, armed myself with pistols as well as rapier and dagger, and set off for St. Paul’s. I was glad of my vampire’s sight as I threaded my way in darkness from the dock to the cathedral. It was just before ten when I took up a position a little way away, among the shuttered stalls of the stationers, to watch for Poley. I had not long to wait before a man with Poley’s furtive gait passed me, the light of the link carried before him showing off his tarnished finery. I stepped from the shadows and laid a hand upon his arm. He twitched away, and I saw a stranger’s face grinning up at me. I became aware of someone behind me at the same instant that something smashed into the back of my head. There was a flash of light inside my skull, then only darkness.