Witch Hammer Read Online Free PDF Page B

was already thinking better of it. ‘Ned, you’d better do that. Unless . . . Kit?’
    Marlowe put up his hands and stepped back a pace, shaking his head. ‘I’m no actor, My Lord,’ he said, smiling. ‘I’m a scribbler, leave it at that.’
    ‘As you please. Give old Joseph a little part and keep it simple.’
    ‘Bless,’ chorused Sledd and Nat.
    ‘Now, then –’ Strange was beginning to walk about in creative mood as the sun through the trees warmed his back – ‘a bit of light entertainment. Drunken porter, Nat?’
    The comic looked bitterly at him. ‘Why, marry, I’d as soon be a warmed-over crumpet on a drab’s plate at Lammas tide as a pickled herring in the barrel of a lord.’ Sawyer turned his head and spat volubly.
    ‘Is that a yes?’ Strange asked, looking helplessly from man to man. They all shrugged and Sawyer ignored him completely.
    Marlowe came to his aid eventually. ‘I think what Nat is trying to say, My Lord, is that the drunken porter character is a little old hat.’
    Strange looked a little crestfallen. ‘I’ve always rather enjoyed that bit, but it may be that you’re right. Well, I’ll leave it to you. Can you rustle something up by . . . let’s say . . . next Friday?’
    Marlowe nodded. It would not be easy, but it could be done. ‘If everyone lends a hand,’ he said. ‘Copies and so on.’
    ‘That won’t be a problem,’ Sledd said, rubbing his hands together at the deal which seemed to be thoroughly done. ‘Plenty of scholars in Oxford, half of them, according to Marlowe, desperate for a groat.’
    ‘That is doubtless true,’ Strange said. ‘Except that we’re not going to Oxford. We’re going to Stratford.’
    The two women squatted in the coppiced trees and watched as the men walked away, Sledd and Strange still in animated discussion, Marlowe and Martin, heads together already planning the play, Sawyer on his own, as always.
    ‘I like the look of the small one,’ one said to the other. ‘He has evil in his soul.’
    ‘When evil is already there, where is the fun?’ the other asked. ‘The work is done already when the soul is already black.’
    ‘True, true, sister, but fun is not the object. Garnering another soul for the Dark One is what we are about, isn’t it?’ She spat, but unlike Sawyer’s random expectoration, she took a butterfly out of the air without even seeming to take aim. ‘They are packing up to leave so we must be quick, if we are to have him.’
    ‘There will be others,’ the other pointed out.
    ‘But he is so ripe for the taking,’ the other one whined. ‘I want him.’
    The other, older, wiser, forced both eyes to focus on her companion. Her glare was brief, as the left-hand one flew back into the corner, where it usually dwelt. ‘Margaret,’ she said, curtly, ‘we can’t always get what we want, can we?’
    The other looked puzzled. ‘I thought that all this –’ she swept an arm down across them both, taking in their rags, damp and mildewed – ‘was all so that we could have other things we want. I would rather live in a nice warm cottage, if I told the truth, rather than in a ditch, but the Dark One doesn’t want us living in houses, so I am always told. So I live in a ditch. Now, just because I want the little one’s soul, because I want to take him into the Night and play with him just a little, you say I can’t.’ Her last words rose to a high pitched scream, which set the hairs standing on the backs of all necks in the camp.
    Nat Sawyer shuddered and turned to old Joseph. ‘A goose just walked over my grave.’
    ‘Eh?’ Joseph’s hearing was going, but even he had heard that scream.
    The old woman turned to the young one and pointed a crabbed finger at her, right between the eyes. ‘Well,’ she croaked, ‘you can’t have him. If I’m any judge, his soul hasn’t been his to give these many years. We must go now, at any rate. We have places to be and the road is hard and long.’
    ‘There is the