One Dagger For Two Page 6

  “There!” cried Marlowe, “is a man to love! I think I’ll sail with him when he goes to Virginia. We might found a fortune and I’d be king of the Indians and drive the Spaniards out of Mexico!”

  “You do so want to be a king,” laughed Walsingham, “don’t you, Kit!”

  “Ay!” said Marlowe. “I’d give my heart to be king for a year!”

  “That,” said Awdrey, “is why you hate them so much.”

  “A thrust!” cried Marlowe, “you have touched me there!”

  *

  He did so want to be a king. In his little room, sitting on the stool, hugging his leg before the fire, he dreamed of being king, a Machiavellian king — cunning, humane, quick to act, without illusions, yet keeping all the while the love of the people. Without the people’s love, Machiavelli said, no prince had real power.

  But he had promised not to think of things like that. Let him stay quietly breathing in the sweet country air. Lucky Thomas to have so fine a house, such land, so beautiful a woman at his side…

  …Something was wrong there. They were not friends any longer. Once, casually, during supper, Thomas had hinted that Awdrey’s sudden love for worldly power and for hunting was a sign of old age, yet she was young enough, well under thirty. Her passion for sport, this sudden cruel twist — surely that boded something? She had never cared for riding before. It could not be fear of old age, her beauty would last.

  And she was so beautiful. He had no words to describe her beauty. Words were harsh things, soiled with common speech; no phrase could give the fascinating twist of her brows, the delicate line of her nose, the heavy blood-red curve of her mouth…and her eyes: what words could he ever find to tell of such loveliness? She had said he must be discreet. The way she spoke had seemed a hint, a promise; and she had insisted, she had smiled wryly at the repetition as if jeering at him for not realizing its import. Had she meant…? No, it was not right!

  He had sworn an oath to himself, he must keep to his oath.

  He sprang from the stool, unbuttoned his ruff, flung it on to the chest; he ripped off his doublet, unbuckled the sword, rolled down the hose, kicking off his shoes. He untied his breeches, pulled off the shirt and stood naked before the fire. A fine powerful figure he had, a trifle stocky perhaps, but with strong muscles over the chest, shoulders and belly.

  Then he leaped briskly into bed, throwing away the night-gown — he was never really sure if it should be worn in bed or whether it was something one put on when one got up in the morning —. A lovely bed! two feather beds below, a feather bed above, clean sheets and an embroidered quilt.

  Blowing out the candle, he drew the curtains tight to keep out draughts, and in the warm dark bed, snuggled up against the bolster. It was so quiet he felt that he was alone in the house. Not a sound, save the crackle of wood in the grate and his own breathing. Alone in Scadbury…but beyond the stairs, Awdrey was asleep, Awdrey and Thomas in their beds… Did they sleep together? They had two bedrooms; things weren’t right there. They had grown apart. Was Thomas in love with somebody else? He must bring them together. It hurt him to see them quarrelling. She was not far away…in bed…

  *

  Not far away, in the bedroom next to the staircase, separated from Marlowe’s room only by the staircase, Awdrey Walsingham lay in her wide four-poster bed, curtains drawn. The room was very large, the largest bedroom in the house, the walls draped with jolly coloured tapestries showing the life of Ruth. Against the wall was a walnut table, holding a mirror in a gilt frame and various powders, essences, cosmetics, pomades and paints, a brush and a comb. The window had a long cushioned seat, and against one wall stood a chest, five feet high, for her clothes; a cupboard hung from the wall near by holding basin and ewer and towel for washing. She had been undressed by the girl Mary, of whom she was very fond, as strong, ambitious women are sometimes fond of quiet good-natured girls, the perfect mirror for their own strength.

  Poor Mary, her chores were hard; this night she had scarcely been able to keep her eyes open waiting for Madame. And she had to be so very careful not to injure the clothes and so ready with her answers; for Madame liked to talk and to be admired as she undressed.

  Mary slept in the outhouse with the other maids. Her bedmate, a coarse wench named Judy, had cursed her, half-asleep, at being woken up by her cold feet. “Keep yer stockings on,” she had snarled through her nose. Mary had not kept her stockings on, she could not afford to do that; she went naked to bed, like the other maids, because she dared not crumple her clothes by sleeping in them.

  And she was always so tired going to bed; it was tiring to disrobe Madame. Madame liked to talk so much. And it was difficult unhooking the great ruff without bending the starch, then loosening the draw-string of the doublet, hidden in the lining behind hooks and eyes, untying the silk tags, peeling the cumbersome sleeves from her arms without twisting the lace cuffs. And the farthingale! You had to be so careful with the farthingale! It was so stiff with embroidery that a careless finger-nail could easily rip it. It stood up very prim, like a bell, as Madame stepped slowly out of it, like a bee out of a hive, unribboning the warm petticoats. She looked so tiny, did Madame, stepping naked out of her giant farthingale and shivering before the fire. Mary had to have the satin night-gown ready so that she could immediately twist it around her body, the fur collar up to her nose. She stood there, the curves of her young body showing clearly through the gown twisted tightly about her. She watched Mary fold the doublet against its stiffening of whalebone and carry it with the farthingale up to the tall press.

  “Am I getting old, Mary child?” she asked suddenly.

  “Old, Madame!” Mary opened her childish blue eyes very wide and gazed at her mistress, who looked seriously at her above the fur. “You’ll never grow old!” she cried sincerely. “You’re too beautiful!”

  Madame laughed and sat down languidly on the old-fashioned X-shaped stool, stretching out her naked legs to the blaze.

  “How white my skin is, Mary!” she said in a kind of lazy ecstasy. “Court ladies eat gravel, ashes and tallow to keep their skin as white as the Queen’s. She has the whitest skin in the world, just like cream. Whiter than mine. Not a hair to be seen. Look!” Mary looked. Truly, Madame’s legs were beautiful, very white and hairless, with a firm ankle and plump foot. “Master Walsingham says that I’ll grow as muscular as a man if I ride so much. Yet I can’t see any change. Can you, Mary?”

  “They are as beautiful as ever, Madame…”

  “Whiter than yours, Mary?”

  “Much, much whiter.”

  “How did you get sunburnt legs, child? Let me see!”

  “Oh, please…”

  “Come, child! don’t be shy with me. I would see if your legs are as white as mine. Down with your stockings!”

  Nervously, the girl pulled up her kirtle and unrolled her coarse worsted stockings, and critically Madame compared her sturdy legs with her own slim legs.

  “Pretty limbs, child; you should get married. A trifle stumpy, not long enough.”

  “No, Madame, I…I never thought about them, ’cept as legs.”

  Madame laughed and lowered her night-gown, showing the plump, sloping shoulders. “Pass the cream, child.” She raised her chin, held up the Venetian mirror and gazed lovingly at her own reflection, while Mary timidly massaged shoulders, face and breasts with the unguent.

  “Not so hard, child, you pinch. Softer…that’s right. You don’t think I am growing old?”

  “Whatever put such thoughts into your head, Madame! Old! Tush! You’re too beautiful to be old.”

  “What would you do, Mary, if you were as beautiful as I?”

  “What’d I do?” Mary stopped her work and gazed over Madame’s shoulder at her own face reflected behind her mistress’s — a round, flushed face against the fragile white beauty of Madame’s. “I don’t know,” she muttered, “ I’ve never thought things like that.”

  “I thoug
ht all you girls dreamed such things. What is it you think of? Don’t stop, work as you talk.”

  “I haven’t much time for thinking, Madame, ’cept ’bout household things, and how to keep your clothes nice.”

  “Sweet child! Do you think of nothing but me? Don’t you ever think of young men?”

  “I haven’t time, I never see any young men.”

  “Men like Master Marlowe?”

  “Lud! Madame! What am I that I should think of men like him! ’cept to clean up his room and make his bed.”

  “What a terrible life,” murmured Madame. “Thinking only of making beds… You can go now, child.”

  “Thank you, Madame.”

  Madame Awdrey did not turn as the girl went softly out through the curtains; Madame sat hunched up over the fire; and Madame looked suddenly old. Indeed, she looked quite old, with her hands smoothing her face and dragging her eyes up at the corners. Making beds; all your life to be making beds, for others… Madame looked very old as she thought of it.

  “I will make something of my life,” she murmured, watching her own face in the mirror. “I will not die at Scadbury, I will not grow old at Scadbury…”

  She stood up lazily at last, snuggled the nightgown tightly around her, blew out the candle and crept into bed, pinning the curtains after her.

  She lay in the warm darkness, clothes up to her chin, the valance above like some gigantic negro bending forward. Not a sound save the rustle of the silken coverlid, and the tap-tap-tapping of the creeper on the window outside, tap-tap-tapping like a lover; but no lover came.

  Thomas did not stir from his room, although no door, only a curtain, separated his room from hers. Why did he never come?

  She lay wakeful in her great bed, and Marlowe lay wakeful in his smaller bed.

  He was haunted by exciting dreams that kept sleep at bay. Determinations, brave purposes, kept his heart beating quickly. He was amidst friends now, real friends; not boozing louts like Nashe and Peele and Chomley; not ambitious men who would destroy him for the sake of their own ambitions, like Ralegh.

  …Near by, beyond the stairs, lay Awdrey Walsingham…

  He sprang out of bed. Feverishly, he lifted the lid of the chest and drank some water from the silver ewer. It dribbled coldly on his neck and made him shiver.

  … For Awdrey slept not far away, the stairs between them …

  *

  But Awdrey did not sleep. She had arisen, slipped her naked feet into a pair of velvet slippers and tremblingly gone to the curtain separating her room from Thomas’s. It was a battle with her pride, but what is pride compared to love?

  Softly she lifted the curtain and stepped within.

  The bed was a square black shadow in one corner. She padded over, unpinned the curtains and drew them aside.

  The wind blew through the window, sending long tendrils of dark creeper into the room, rattling on the glass; in the grate, the last embers glowed like dim jewels, crackled a little; the decaying rushes on the floor gave out a sickly smell, the smell of death.

  Quietness of death in that little room, death it seemed on the bed, death of love, perhaps. And a woman sobbing on the silk embroidered pillow, sobbing with rage and hurt pride as much as with love. Only the wind rattled on the pane like death calling; the wood died in the grate, seemed to gasp redly as if striving to breathe…no other noise, except a woman weeping…

  Chapter VI

  “MY MASTER’S MINION”

  Morning washes not only darkness from the earth, but dreams from men’s minds. Dreams are crude things in daylight; one shakes one’s head and wonders how such things could ever have been believed in; last night seems strange, seems something that somebody else has lived.

  The dawn came up over Chislehurst, bringing sunlight with it to wipe the raindrops from bare trees and from the gables of Scadbury, it burned on the church steeple in the village, repainted the old signs outside inns. Morning; and somebody shaking the curtains of Marlowe’s bed, swinging them open and flooding him with a fierce cold light.

  He blinked, sat up and smiled to see the same room of last night, the painted hangings, the open window with the creeper tossing in the wind, fire roaring in the grate, his basin and ewer and towel ready for his washing, clothes laid neatly out, and a girl’s clean round face gazing at him, a soft girl-voice saying, “You must wake up, Master Marlowe: it’s past six, breakfast will soon be ready! lud! this isn’t London, sir!”

  “No, thank the Lord!” Fully awake now, Marlowe stretched his arms and ruffled his hair. “Pass me the night-gown, sweet,” he said. He took it from her, slipped it around his shoulders and stepped carefully out of bed, holding the gown tightly about him.

  Happy! Good heavens, how happy he was!

  *

  Walsingham was already at breakfast when Marlowe came into the Winter Parlour, on the ground floor, next to the kitchen. They dined very informally at Scadbury, and that was a constant cause of bickering between Thomas and Awdrey, she wanting butlers and serving-men waiting on her, he hating them.

  The sunlight shone into the room this morning, adding colour to the dying rushes on the floor, showing up the threads in the tapestry, brightening the cushions.

  “A merry morning, Kit!” cried Walsingham. “Help yourself. Each man has his own ideas about breakfast. I daren’t serve anyone lest I give them too much or too little. Some beer?”

  He lifted the glass jug and filled a silver cup with beer, while Marlowe helped himself to poached egg and chop; as he picked the chop up in his fingers, after turning it over in the egg to coat it well with the yolk, and had it wellnigh to his lips, he paused and laid it down again.

  Awdrey had entered. Walsingham, having his back to the door, did not see her arrive, but he noticed the intent look in Marlowe’s eyes and with a sudden frown, swung round to face his wife.

  She stood in the sunlight, smiling at them, hair back from her forehead and pinned with a silver bodkin to a feathered velvet cap. She seemed half-man, half-woman; man from hips down, woman from hips up. Dressed for riding, she wore man’s breeches, of salmon-coloured satin, slashed to show pink lining, and joined to grey and green ribbed stockings with black garters; leather boots came to above her knees and were clipped with long spurs. That was the man half; but the doublet was feminine, drawn painfully in at the waist until it seemed that you could have spanned it with your hand, and widening out to puffed-up shoulders, slashed sleeves a foot wide, big coral buttons curving down the front; a small ruff was coiled about her throat, great gloves were in one hand, and hanging from her neck was a gold carcanet brimming with ambergris.

  “A pretty morning to you both!” Swiftly, she walked to her stool, primly, her legs straight, unbending, one foot placed carefully before the other as if she stepped a tight-rope. “Kit!” she cried. “You aren’t ready for our ride!”

  “I’m sorry, I clean forgot. It won’t take a minute to slip off this ruff and pull on a pair of boots.”

  She pouted, daintily picked up a chop from the plate and sucked rather than ate the meat on it. “A little beer, Thomas,” she said.

  He poured it for her, not saying a word, then picked up his chop and slowly gnawed the meat.

  “You’ve got a fine day,” he said at last.

  “A glorious day!” she replied merrily.

  Marlowe went quickly from the meal to change, and when he hurried down the back stairs and out of the front door, he found Awdrey already waiting for him; his jennet and her horse, a dark narrow-headed Barb, being held by an ostler. But not horses, nor Awdrey, did Marlowe see; Frizer was standing there, smiling, a few steps below Awdrey.

  “No,” he was saying, “Master Walsingham has asked me to stay on about some rents. I’m not going back for a week or two.”

  She was flushed, but when she saw Marlowe, she forced a smile. “We’re having a hunt next week!” she cried. “Don’t forget it like you forgot this morning!”

&nbs
p; “Never again,” said Marlowe, “will I forget.”

  He watched her leap nimbly astride the little Barb, and admired the easy feline grace of her long limbs. Watching her then, he felt a great, an almost overpowering love for her; perhaps it was the stockings, for there is always something particularly sensual in a woman in man’s clothing, and from such gross things does delicate love grow; perhaps it was the sunlight, the spring-like freshness of the air…all that Marlowe knew was that he loved her terribly.

  “Well,” said Frizer, “she’s waiting.”

  He glanced keenly at the man, but said nothing. But when he had mounted and had ridden, next to Awdrey, down the avenue, he turned to look at Scadbury and saw Frizer still standing on the steps, gazing at their backs.

  *

  A cold wind was blowing, it burned on their cheeks, whipping the blood to the surface, warming them as they raced down the long beautiful avenue towards St. Paul’s Cray Common; they did not go to the village, for Awdrey suddenly swerved her horse into a thick wood near by.

  It was wild growth here, and dangerous riding, for the trees were bent together, roots and boughs, and the ground was mushy with dead leaves, rotten with rain. A sickly-sweet smell clung about them, and long-dead creepers hung down, brushing like spiders on their cheeks and gripping their hair. Awdrey did not pause, she did not seem to fear a fall, and Marlowe set his teeth, determined to hide his cowardice.

  Straight she sat in her small English saddle, knees pressed against the horse’s sides, the wind teasing strands of hair out of place and tugging them behind her. Never did she deflect her course; almost when she seemed doomed to fall, she swerved in time or leaped a fallen tree; once her horse staggered, its hoofs finding no solidity in a heap of brown wet leaves, and Marlowe shouted his alarm; but swiftly she had righted herself and was on, circling great oaks and yews, on through this maze of shrubbery.