and turned my back on his mumbled retort. “And you are?” I asked the man who had arrested me.
“Henry Maunder,” was the terse reply.
“The charge?” Tom asked, his voice shrill with alarm.
“Blasphemy, sir,” Maunder responded tonelessly. I nodded—I had guessed.” I am ready,” I said.
“Master Maunder?” Frizer’s tone was one of command. “If you would be so kind as to delay your departure a short while, I have a letter to deliver for my master.” He ignored the man’s protests, turning to Tom. “Yes, yes, please wait,” Tom agreed, weakly. As I left the chamber Frizer was speaking quietly to Tom, and eyeing the ruin of his linen.
By virtue of my university degrees I was a gentleman, even if a somewhat disreputable one. Master Maunder requested my sword, but left me my poniard. Nor was I yet in irons, being taken as I was from the house of a powerful protector who might take exception to the practice. Irons, irony—I grinned humorlessly. Tom was my protector no longer, and might indeed have relished the sight of me dragged off in chains if Maunder had but known it.
It was a full hour later before Frizer joined us, and we were able to start for the City. The day was overcast and threatening rain, for which I was grateful, as sunlight had recently been causing me savage headaches. We had not been riding long when Frizer pulled his horse up beside mine and began to chatter.
“They arrested poor Kyd, you know. Found heretical papers in his chamber. Good friend he was to you though: they had to rack him before he told them the papers were yours. Have you ever seen anybody racked? Sometimes the arms dislocate first and sometimes the stomach muscles tear loose. The gaolers bet on which it’ll be. And sometimes, when you’re stretched that tight, they’ll bounce coins on your belly. Just the weight of one coin can do it, sometimes, rip you near in two.” I had a sudden, sickening vision of myself broken and crippled, begging for my bread, my numbed and nerveless hands unable to hold a pen. Poor Kyd! I felt the color drain from my face as he continued; triumph and venom spurting from him like arterial blood. “Of course, it’ll not stop there; if they can prove you an atheist or heretic, it’s the stake for you! They tie you up and roast you alive for all to see and I’d make sure it’s a slow fire and no mercy shown, when it’s your turn. Strangling would be too quick for the likes of you.” I suppressed a shudder as the relentless voice went on.
“Now if you’re found a traitor, that’s another thing altogether. You being a commoner, there’ll be no gentle axe for you, lad. No, you they’ll take to Tyburn and hang. You know the rest well enough, I warrant! Before you’re dead, you’re cut down, your cock and ballocks gets sliced off, and I’ll be bribing the hangman for yours, as a keepsake for Master Thomas! Then they gut you, but you’re not dead yet—you get to watch them burn your living guts before your face. Oh, it can go on for hours with a man as knows his work, and say what they will about yon Master Topcliffe, there’s none assays he slacks his work! Then they cut you into quarters and take your head for a pole on London—”
“Enough!” Maunder must have observed the greensick expression on my face, and moving in to investigate, heard the last of Frizer’s harangue. “Now either hold your spiteful tongue or be off with you!” To my immense relief Frizer glared for a moment then galloped off, his malevolent laugh floating back to us.
“And you, Master Marlowe, you can put that blade away, or I’ll be obliged to ask you for it.” I glanced in wonder at the dagger in my hand, which I did not recall drawing, and then to my jailer.
“I do thank you,” I said, in a voice as shaky as my smile. Maunder shook his head.
“Do not think on it, man. Belike it’s nothing at all.” If only I could believe that, I thought, but much to my surprise, Maunder had the right of it. The next morning I presented myself before the Council, answered a few questions about the papers, a part of a treatise on Arianism I’d been using for research, and they let me go, extracting my compliance to appear before them early each