Perfect Shadows

Part Three:

SHADOWS OF TREASON

chapter 1

Mid-November, and the Accession Day festivities, found me living in my own house for the first time since my renascence. I had moved into the old manor at Chelsey, taking the loups-garous Jehan, Sylvie, and Sylvie’s mother Sylvana to run the house, with Nicolas as my keeper.

I had approached Nicolas with the idea of my own premises soon after my violent encounter with Geoffrey, and had been both startled and pleased when he deeded the manor over to me, with the proviso that one or another of my elders would stay near me at all times. Some time before he had informed me, as soon as I had healed enough to comprehend it, that a sum of money had been settled on me, and we had agreed that he would continue to manage it. I learned that I had a considerable income.

I had never had more than a few pounds to my name before, and was quite happy with these arrangements. I enjoyed being a gentleman of affluent means, and not having to buckle under the vagaries of public taste just to scratch out a meager living with my pen. I might not remember very much about my previous life, but the degradation poverty wreaked on it echoed still.

I shook myself fully awake and began to dress in the soft twilight afternoon. I still prowled the dark London streets, often lingering in the inns and taverns I had frequented while alive, sitting in the shadows and listening to the habitual wrangling of the players, almost always with Jehan along as watchdog.

The familiar surroundings enticed more memories from my cloudy past, memories that led me to the conclusion that I had been more than a little cruel, most malicious, and quite reprehensible while alive, but I shrugged this judgment aside. It was very easy to pronounce on someone, from the outside, but not at all easy to discern the truth within. The truth was that I would do whatever I had to now to stay alive just as I had done then. Only the means had changed.

Oh, I was no longer quite so brash and turbulent, that afternoon in Deptford had cured me of much of that, and the powers and abilities of my new estate far eclipsed the fleeting pleasures of defiant poses and furious disputes, even if I had had the wit remaining to so indulge myself. I was sitting in a dark corner of the Anchor musing upon this, when I was startled to hear my name spat out as if it were a swear word.

“Marlowe! That bombastic brabbler! What a pity he’s not here to see what a true poet can do with the drama—” A general round of laughter drowned the snarling voice.

“How now, Jimmy, did Kind Kit lampoon one of your youthful efforts before he went and got himself spitted?” The one called Jimmy growled an unintelligible reply to the laughing question.

“Come now, friends, the man is dead. Let him rest, if he can,” another suggested.

“You’re a deal too kind, Will. He was no friend to you!”

“And a worse yet to himself,” the one called Will retorted, brushing the hair back from his high forehead. “Yes, he had a viper’s tongue, and vicious temperament, but who was left to pay the reckoning but himself? Henslowe rejected your new piece, did he, Jimmy? Come, let us look at it, and see what we may do,” and resting his arm comfortingly across the angry man’s shoulders he led him from the room.

I may well have parodied something that the fretful Jimmy had written. Anyone I could think of had fallen victim to my spleen those last few weeks of my life, but I doubted that many had taken it so to heart. A rueful smile curled my lips as I belatedly recognized the man, Will, who had scooped up my fallen crown, writing some of the most popular plays in London. I felt resentment flare at the thought, but suppressed it. What had happened to me had nothing to do with Warwickshire’s Will, the sweetest-tempered of men, and deserving of patronage, not obloquy.

Jimmy Dighton, on the other hand, was a third-rate scribbler, presuming on his sister’s lightskirted affaires d’amour to gain patronage. I wondered if Will stood in need of money; the devil knew that most poets and play-writers did. I’d have to look into it, another time.



A few nights later I was riding alone, for once, back from an evening’s entertainment at Ralegh’s Durham house. The horse reared suddenly as a slight young man, giggling drunk from the sound of him, stumbled and rolled directly beneath the horse’s hooves. The big stallion crow-hopped backward a few feet and dropped again to all fours, sidling a bit as two more young men spilled from a tavern and stooped to pick up their friend. I controlled the horse, waiting until they had the drunken lad on his feet before speaking. Not that the purported rescuers were in any better shape, I noted.

“There are easier ways of killing yourself than being trampled to death,” I observed dryly to the wobbling trio before me. “Or by drinking yourselves to death,” I added as an afterthought. Two of them seemed to find this exceedingly funny, while the third, the one who had fallen in the street, took offense, drew his rapier and brandished it theatrically in my general direction. The battle-trained stallion, seeing the flash of steel before his nose, reared again, lashed out with one hoof and caught the would-be warrior neatly in the chest. I heard a bone snap; the youth dropped his sword into the half-frozen muck and stared at it stupidly for a few seconds before crumpling into an untidy heap beside it. Cursing, I vaulted from the horse’s back, dropped the reins to the ground, and knelt next to the fallen bravo. The other two stood gaping stupidly for a time before one of them spoke.

“We were going to the stews,” he said plaintively.

“Go then,” was my terse answer. The speaker shook his head.

“Roger was going to pay,” he said, mournfully indicating the figure at his feet. I snorted.

“Help me get him back inside, fetch a surgeon, and I’ll pay,” I said with distaste, and finally carried the young man back inside by myself, the other two being too drunk to help. When I stepped into the light the taller of the two gasped.

“It’s him,” he hissed to his companion. “Prince Kryštof, that Her Majesty banished from Court the last time we were there!”

“When did she?” the other asked bewilderedly.

“While you were outside spewing your tripes up,” he spat, then turned tome. “I am Sir Henry Warren, your grace, and this is Sir Edward Selby. That’s the Earl of Almsbury,” he added, indicating his unconscious companion. “We’ve been most anxious to meet you—” he withered under my baleful one-eyed glare, and the two beat a hasty retreat, returning shortly with a stooping gray-haired man, who wheezed and clucked, but seemed to set the collarbone competently enough. The young man regained consciousness at some point during the process, but fortunately seemed too drunk to feel it. As he turned his blond head to the light and opened his incredible violet-blue eyes I started: it was my young companion from the cemetery, Roger Randolph. I had seen Almsbury swanking around the court, but had never really paid him enough attention to recognize him. The boy smiled at me then sank into a stupor again. I turned to the other two asking where they lodged, but couldn’t get an intelligible answer. I flipped the two a gold noble and they departed, arguing over which brothel to patronize. I was between keepers at the moment, Nicolas having departed to spend a few months seeing to our business interests in Paris and Rózsa’s arrival from there being delayed by storms in the Channel, and that aided my decision. I shrugged and made arrangements to take the wounded man with me to Chelsey.

The innkeeper, seeing gold spent so casually, was as helpful as could be, bundling the young man’s dropped sword so it could be tied to the saddle, and assigning his largest stableman to lift the cloak-wrapped casualty to my saddlebow after I had mounted. The round-faced little man had stepped forward to attend that office himself, but one look at the stallion’s laid-back ears and rolling eye had been enough to convince him of his folly. I settled the lad against me then felt in my purse for coin. The innkeeper gasped as he deftly fielded the coin tossed to him, knowing it for gold by the weight, before he ever lifted it to the light. A silver piece followed, slipped to the stableman, but from the look on the master’s face, the hostler wasn’t going to see much of it. I frowned and asked the big man to check the girth, taking the opportunity to speak quietly to him.

“If you should find yourself wanting other employment, come to Lovell House, Chelsey. I wish to expand my stable, and can use a good hand with horses,” I said impulsively. The man’s glance flicked to the innkeeper and back to me, taking in the fine clothing and the well-fed and cared-for stallion.

“Aye, I might,” he grunted, the corner of his mouth quirking in a good-humored smile, and I urged my horse forward and disappeared into the night.