morning. I readily agreed, although it meant lingering in a city that daily grew more plague-ridden.
Chapter 6
Henry Percy, the Earl of Northumberland looked up impatiently at the interruption, but composed his features at the sight of his visitor. “You have news for me, Master Poley?” he asked, motioning the spy to take a stool near the table.
“I have, my lord,” Poley said, looking expectant.
“News first,” Northumberland replied shortly and Poley shrugged.
“It’s arranged. Marlowe dies at the end of the week. He’ll expect to meet with Walsingham in Deptford, but his host will be a somewhat grimmer one,” Poley grinned, and outlined the scheme. Northumberland nodded, then took a small bottle from a casket on the table before him.
“You may need this,” he told the spy. “It is a mixture of manicon and poppy—put it in his wine if his head for drink turns out stronger than you suppose. And here is your pay,” he added, dropping a fat pouch beside the bottle. It chinked comfortingly. Poley shook his head, but took the poison and the pouch and made his exit.
Northumberland stood and began to pace. This would be the test, then. If the rash and improvident poet had been changed by his association with the ones Doctor Montague named as vampire, and he did meet his end there in Deptford, he would rise up from his grave like Lazarus, and he, Percy, would at last have immortality within his grasp.
The older vampires would be far too hard to catch, to use so and then be rid of, but Kit, wild, headstrong and impetuous Kit, would be easier meat. Always supposing of course that the victim did not smell a trap in Deptford and so delay his dying day. Not likely, Percy thought, not at all likely, and he began to lay his plans.
Chapter 7
Not many days after my first appearance before the council I received a letter from Tom asking me in the friendliest terms for a meeting. He had heard of my restriction and suggested a lodging house in Deptford as a convenient meeting place, so I had promised to meet him on the thirtieth of May at Eleanor Bull’s public house in Deptford.
I arrived just before ten that morning and was shown to a private room. It contained a table and chairs, a small cot against one wall and had a private entrance to the gardens. A jug of wine rested on the table, and I was left alone to await my host. Before long the door opened, but the man that stepped through was not Tom.
“Good morrow, Kit,” Robin Poley said. “I happened to be at Scadbury and Tom asked me to tell you that he will be a little delayed. I told him I would keep you glad company until he comes,” he added, pouring the wine. For a while we talked of “the old days”, as Poley called them, and he kept my cup filled. When the jug was empty he went to fetch another and so the time passed until about two, when I, feeling the wine, went to walk in the garden to try to clear my head. Since Tom could not be bothered to come by this time, I considered riding the few miles on to Blackavar, but the dazzling sunlight had induced another of the raging headaches I was lately subject to. I went back to the room and stretched out on the hard, narrow cot. It was so placed that if I lay with my head to its head, I trapped my left arm, my sword arm, against the wall. I unbuckled my sword and placed my head at the cot’s foot, leaving my blade within easy reach.
“Ah, Kit, you don’t trust me?” Poley asked.
“No, I don’t,” I replied shortly, and settled to sleep off the effects of the wine. After a time I became aware of low voices in the room, but could make but little sense of what I heard.
“—it took manicon and poppy in that last jug; the brandywine had scarce any effect at all—”
“—so I’ll serve him as he threatened to serve me. I’ll cut his throat!”
“—like an accident! Say he pulled your dagger from behind, like he did mine last winter and you was defendin’ yourself—”
I recognized the voice of Ingram Frizer, and knew that I was lost; it was my own murder I was hearing plotted. The other newcomer was Nicholas Skeres. I fumbled for my steel, but it was gone. I tried to