Mark Chadbourn - The Scar-Crow Men

In the shadowed upper galleries and in the sunlit yard, the audience stood rapt, unreadable behind their masks. Standing in the sunbeam centre-stage, a fat man with a bushy white beard and long white hair threw his arms wide and began to declaim in a dreamlike cadence. Will drifted with the words.

‘ Whereby whole cities have escap’d the plague ,

And thousand desperate maladies been cur’d?

Yet art thou still but Faustus, and a man .

Couldst thou make men to live eternally ,

Or, being dead, raise them to life again … ’

In the warmth of the evening, Will’s thoughts moved back in time, inexorably, to his love, Jenny, stolen from him that hot summer day as she made her way across the cornfield on the edge of the Forest of Arden. There one moment, gone the next. Taken by the eternal Enemy, the Unseelie Court, before his very eyes, to a fate the spy could barely bring himself to consider. His hand unconsciously went to Jenny’s locket which he always wore next to his skin, a symbol of his hope that one day he could put the terrible mystery to rest — for good or ill — and find some kind of peace.

Nathaniel appeared at Will’s elbow, gripped by the scene on stage where a grotesque devil towered over the protagonist Faustus. Men surreptitiously crossed themselves, women averted their gaze. The plague had made everyone more fearful of hell’s torments. Another of the perverse tortures in which Kit revelled, Will mused: promise the great and the good entertainment, and then make them afraid for their mortal souls.

‘ The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus . This is a troubling play,’ Nathaniel noted. ‘Men selling their souls to the devil. Is this truly a subject for entertainment? I have never seen the like before. It could drive women mad. And men too, for that matter.’

Will watched the heavily bearded Faustus stalk the stage, demonstrating his arrogance to the audience. ‘Kit always has something of import to say in his work. I fear this one may be more personal than his others, however.’ Will had been concerned about his friend’s state of mind in recent days. The work they did had been eating away at Marlowe for years, but in the last few weeks the playwright had been taking time away from the people he knew. Though all writers were prone to black moods, Kit’s spirits had never been darker.

‘These players are not as good as Edward Alleyn’s men. They bark their lines as if they hail fellow sots outside a stew,’ Nathaniel commented dismissively.

Will listened to the colourfully attired player boom his lines to reach the back of the audience. ‘There are few players of quality left in London with the plague rampant and the theatres closed,’ he said. ‘Alleyn has taken Lord Strange’s Men and some players from the Admiral’s Men on a tour of the country to make ends meet. Kit must make do with the dregs.’

Glancing around, Nathaniel hissed a warning. Will followed his assistant’s nod to where the audience was being parted by three men, two without masks, the third wearing the face of an angel. Gowned in black velvet, the man removed the mask with a flourish to reveal the face of the spymaster Sir Robert Cecil, a small, hunchbacked man with intense, dark eyes that held a sly intelligence. With him were Robert Rowland, tall and slender with a face like an unmade bed who oversaw the secret service’s complex files, and Sinclair, a saturnine former mercenary who never left Cecil’s side. A head’s-height above his companions and with the broad shoulders of country stock, Sinclair glared at Will.

The agent cursed under his breath, frustrated at this un-welcome distraction from the threat he sensed near to hand.

‘Fitting, no?’ Cecil indicated the angel mask and then gestured to the devil on the stage. ‘Come.’

With a speed and strength that belied his disability, the spymaster pushed his way through the audience to the rear of the gallery where they could talk without being overheard. The Queen teased Cecil with the nickname Little Elf, but Will knew the man’s sharp mind had helped him maintain power at court ever since his father, Lord Burghley, had installed him as secretary of state after Sir Francis Walsingham’s death. Clasping his hands behind his back, the short man stood with all the gravity of someone possessed of an ambition that far exceeded his stature.

‘I have news of some import that may impact upon your work in the near future, Master Swyfte. Intelligence comes to us from France. Henri de Navarre is close to converting to Catholicism, encouraged by Gabrielle, his whore, the Duchesse de Beaufort et Verneuil,’ Cecil announced, his head cocked back in a supercilious manner.

‘A Catholic!’ Rowland exclaimed, plucking at his eggshell-blue and yellow doublet in distress. ‘Are we to be isolated completely?’ His high-crowned hat only drew attention to his long, crumpled face.

Cecil paid his file-keeper no heed, but said dismissively, ‘Her Majesty will resent it, but religion only matters insomuch as it drives politics.’

‘Yet it still has the capacity to draw fresh blood,’ Will noted a little more sharply than he intended.

Cecil fixed a mistrustful eye on his agent. Will resisted the urge to respond. The Little Elf was more concerned with his own advancement at court than with the men who risked life and limb for him, and often seemed to suspect his charges more than the enemies they faced.

‘It was English troops and a fortune from our coffers that helped Henri win his kingdom. This is betrayal,’ Rowland continued, his cheeks flushed with passion.

‘It could work in our favour,’ Will mused. ‘Henri de Navarre is clever. Such a move would shift the balance of power in the Catholic League, and he could prove a strong, friendly rival to curtail the ambitions of Philip of Spain.’

Rowland stopped wringing his hands at Will’s assurance, and bowed his head in reflection. But Sinclair loomed over the smaller man’s shoulder and growled, ‘Still, we are beset from many quarters. The situation in Ireland is a concern.’

Cecil nodded, his gaze raised to the rafters a hand’s-width above Sinclair’s head. ‘Hugh O’Neill cannot be trusted. He professes loyalty to the Crown, but he builds his own power slowly. He will be trouble, mark my words. And the people of Ireland already hate us. But where are the results I need, Master Swyfte? Should I dispose of all the spies I have and find a better crew?’

Will took a moment to contain his ire, and then said calmly, ‘Some men complain of poor resources and little support, Sir Robert. Others that they have been abandoned in the midst of dangerous waters. It is hard to spy when you feel you stand alone.’

‘You know I must keep a close eye on our coffers, sir. The Earl of Essex continually looks for ways by which he may criticize the work we do, and he has already spoken to the Queen about our profligacy. We must all cut our cloth accordingly in these difficult times.’ The Little Elf gave a patronizing smile which fell away quickly when he caught sight of his gleaming rival, clad all in white, with a smirking Tobias Strangewayes at his side.

‘Damn him,’ Cecil whispered. ‘What mischief is he planning now?’

‘Essex seeks to undermine our work at every turn,’ Sinclair growled, glowering at the two men. ‘In these times no one can be trusted. We are beset by enemies on all sides. Across Europe, in the towns and villages of England and, yes, even in the court itself. There are spies everywhere, spreading lies and deceit. Where once this great land was filled with bravery, there is now only sweat, and doubt, and fear.’

And we cannot even trust our own masters any more , Will thought bitterly. His relationship with the old spymaster, Walsingham, had always been tense, but now it seemed like a golden age.