Pym was scowling up at me. “What mischief are you up to there, Gracie?”
I give him a playful smile. “A bit naughty I’m being,” I sing out. “Pardon me, and I’ll stop it now.” I turned away from the window.
“Show them the back exit,” mutters Tristan to me. “Take Marlowe too.”
So now I’m to be saving Kit and the fellow he betrayed me with. As I again brush past Kit, he has finished donning his undergarments, and he reaches his hand for mine again and this time I grasp it, tight, so tight as if I will never release him, for in truth all I care about is getting him to safety.
Him, yes, but not Sir Edward. For what benefit is there in securing Sir Edward’s safety? It keeps him free to continue his dalliance with my love, and it keeps him free to pledge his money where Tristan doesn’t wish it. Suddenly as clear as day, I see the single stroke that will bring succour to both Tristan and myself.
As Kit and I approach Sir Edward so that I may lead us all from the building, I bend over a moment, rise up quick, and then quicker still, I make that stroke.
Sir Edward puts both of his hands to the close of his velvet vest. A dizzy spell takes him and doesn’t he reach out with one of his hands to steady himself against the doorway. The hand is red, and makes a bloody print on the wall.
Tristan takes this in, his face a handsome study in consternation, and his clever mind soon arrives at the only possible explanation. He looks at me and sure I show him that bloody dagger still in my hand. ’Twas the very weapon he himself had wrested from my dim fella on his first arrival, and kicked across the floor to me. I’d snatched it up then to prevent further violence, and hadn’t its owner stormed out of the place without reclaiming it. Since then, I’d got in the habit of carrying it. Its sheath was bound to my leg under my skirts. It had found a home, just now, in Sir Edward’s heart.
Tristan’s amazed to learn it’s capable of murder I am (not knowing a thing of my life back home, and the uses Your Grace has put me to over the years), and so silent he is, as we watch Sir Edward settle to the floor, looking a bit like Juliet at the end of that detestable tragedy. He hardly has as much of a beard as Saunder Cooke himself.
“Well there,” I say to Tristan, “he won’t be funding the Boston Council any more, will he?”
I see in the corner of my eye that Kit—more concerned than heartbroken, and a good thing too!—is ushering the Constable out of the room. One of Sir Edward’s legs has kicked out near me, so I wipe the dagger’s blade on his drawers and slide it into the sheath on my leg, just to keep it handy. Then I get up, stepping well clear of the pool of blood that’s been burbling out of Sir Edward, and follow them out.
In the shuffle of bodies in the corridor, Kit arranges himself to be beside me. “I’d sooner slay myself than break your heart, dearest,” he whispers urgent in my ear. “That man was nothing to me, I was just using him to get some information for Her Majesty. I’ll explain my secrecy and make it up to you as soon as we are out of here.” He kissed my cheek and I confess, Your Grace, it made me wobbly. Never was there a lovelier set of lips to be kissed than my dear Kit’s.
Pardon me for that distraction. Back to the events now.
For a moment, every one of us wants the same thing: to get down to the ground floor. For different reasons everyone wants it, but still there is a cooperation that wasn’t there before, and so in very short order we are there. The tavern is deserted; people left when all the shouting started and the blood began sheeting down ’tween the floorboards. A crowd it is now gathered in the street just outside. Although the front door to the street is open, we can’t see out into the glare, so no way to know if Simon Beresford is there. This hardly matters now, for the most important thing now is that Kit Marlowe is recognized by nobody.
The secret door for which we’re headed is in the back corner behind the bar, meaning we must cross by the front door to reach it. Tristan is in the lead, then the Constable clutching at him, so he won’t be separated from the man in charge, who, in the absence of Sir Edward, is the likeliest one to pay him off. Just behind them comes myself, clutching hands with Kit.
Now enters Proprietor Pym through the front door, blinking in the unaccustomed darkness. I turn to greet him, to assure him that—as mad as it might seem to say it—all this chaos is about to be resolved, with the one unfortunate detail that the Constable will be learning of one hidden exit. But certain I am that Pym will prefer this to his establishment being revealed as a trysting place for sodomites.
As I watch Pym’s face, his eyes adjust to the dim, and land upon the half-dressed Kit Marlowe. Kit’s not-being-dead was as much a shock to him as it was to the Constable. But he collects himself almost at once, turns to me and says, “Gracie, do you have this in hand?”
“I do. We’re taking them out the below-exit. None will ever see him.”
I think he will be pleased, but he shakes his head. “Know you not that in Deptford, at the alehouse where Marlowe staged his death—”
“It weren’t an alehouse,” I said. “It was a gentlewoman’s private home, who rented out rooms. What about it?” I ask, with a queer worried feeling in my innards. I glance over to Tristan to see how he is faring with the door.
The hidden door here hides perfectly in plain sight, for it cannot be detected by the eye, only by touch. Tristan is running his hands over the paneling, trying to find it. And as he does, Pym finishes his thought: “They say business in Deptford quadrupled on account of people going to see where the famous Christopher Marlowe was murdered. So imagine what this will do for us!” And he grabs for Kit, meaning to push him outside into the curious Southwark crowd forming around the door of the tavern—most of whom will know him by sight.
Now, Kit knows his way around a fight, but he’s not expecting this, and so before he registers it, Pym’s fist, big as a hamhock, has closed around his arm, just above the elbow. Kit looks like a boy who’s been caught in the middle of some mischief by a fat schoolmaster.