Black Death Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  A Selection of Recent Titles by M.J. Trow

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  A Selection of Recent Titles by M.J. Trow

  The Kit Marlowe Series

  DARK ENTRY *

  SILENT COURT *

  WITCH HAMMER *

  SCORPIONS’ NEST *

  CRIMSON ROSE *

  TRAITOR’S STORM *

  SECRET WORLD *

  ELEVENTH HOUR *

  QUEEN’S PROGRESS *

  BLACK DEATH *

  The Grand & Batchelor Series

  THE BLUE AND THE GREY *

  THE CIRCLE *

  THE ANGEL *

  THE ISLAND *

  THE RING *

  The Peter Maxwell Series

  MAXWELL’S ISLAND

  MAXWELL’S CROSSING

  MAXWELL’S RETURN

  MAXWELL’S ACADEMY

  * available from Severn House

  BLACK DEATH

  M.J. Trow

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  First published in Great Britain and the USA 2019 by

  Crème de la Crime an imprint of

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

  Eardley House, 4 Uxbridge Street, London W8 7SY.

  This eBook edition first published in 2019 by Severn House Digital

  an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited

  Trade paperback edition first published

  in Great Britain and the USA 2019 by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD.

  Copyright © 2019 by M.J. Trow and Maryanne Coleman.

  The right of M.J. Trow and Maryanne Coleman to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

  ISBN-13: 978-1-78029-116-1 (cased)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-78029-601-2 (trade paper)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-4483-0218-5 (e-book)

  Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.

  This ebook produced by

  Palimpsest Book Production Limited,

  Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland

  ONE

  The Pestilence came to Dowgate that summer. The Spaniards sent it, the rumour ran, in plague ships that drifted with the tide up the river in the dead of night. The Lord sent it because the City’s Livery Companies had displeased him, worshipping Mammon as they did. Above all, it was the Devil, the old serpent, keen as always to add souls to his legions. What if they shivered when he sent for them, if their bodies bulged with black sores and oozed blood? It was all one to him, the great searcher, hobbling on his cloven hoofs down the cobbled smock alleys and prancing through the steelyards, ringing to his tune.

  Meg Honeytree had seen him creeping along Elbow Lane; Jane Griggs had caught a blast of his foul breath as he brushed past her on his way to the Vintry. She hadn’t believed a word from the plague doctor in his leather beak, spouting some rubbish about the miasma that rose from the old Walbrook, the stream that lay buried under London’s streets. It was the Fiend, simple as that.

  Robert Greene didn’t know. Robert Greene didn’t care. He sat in his house along Kyroun Lane, watching the Baltic ships riding the river’s tide. The huge cranes in the Vintry swung above the Thames mist, groaning as their ropes took the weight of the dark timber, the silver furs. Silent in the shadows, cats prowled, fat on the rats that streamed from the ships in their hundreds. Even at dusk the docks were alive, the sailors’ calls rising above the hum of a never-sleeping city, the lanterns darting like fireflies on the water.

  Robert Greene was in his thirty-fifth year, but today he felt as old as Methuselah. Around him, in his garret room, the spiders ruled, weaving whole kingdoms in the casement, pattering over his parchment, leaving trails of God-alone-knew-what all over his Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay. He dipped the quill into the ink. There would be no plays tonight, no poetry; not his own, nor anyone else’s. Tonight, he had to write a letter – just one – to a man he hated more than anyone in the world. He shivered suddenly as a draught caught him. He thought he heard a creak on the stair, a muttered word, a whisper just on the cusp of sound. It couldn’t be Mrs Isam; she never came this high into the eaves, not when Dominus Greene was there. And besides, she never spoke below a dull roar, being hard of hearing and of most other senses beyond cooking and laundering. And Dominus Greene had not stirred from his room for three days and three nights. Only one man had come to see him: not Doll, not the snivelling Fortunatus; no one, except that one man.

  Greene felt cold and old as he dipped the quill again. How could he start this letter, after all this time? Yet, how could he not, when his life depended on it? He took a breath as deep as his rattling lungs would allow and pulled the linen shroud up over his head. The candle guttered as his hand moved past it and the quill tip scratched the vellum.

  ‘To Christopher Marlowe,’ he saw the words appear and nearly shrank from them. They seemed almost to glow in the gloom of his chamber. ‘Dominus of Corpus Christi College, poet, playwright, friend to the afflicted.’ It was in Greene’s nature to grovel, to compliment, to laud, even the most undeserving. But would the recipient of this letter appreciate it, that was the question? Marlowe, who could see deep into men’s souls with those dark eyes of his. Greene paused, a glutinous drop of ink frozen on the tip of the feather. He toyed with screwing up the letter and starting again. But time was of the essence and the sand in his glass had long ago run out. He dipped the quill again and forced his aching fingers to move to the next line – ‘Kit,’ he wrote.

  ‘There is Pestilence north of the river,’ Tom Sledd said it again, like a mantra, hissed on every outward breath he made. Beyond him, in the wooden O of the Rose, carpenters hammered and sawed, hauling on ropes and splashing paint. Sledd took in their work. Then he shook his head; it didn’t look much like Paris to him. It looked like bits of wood and canvas that yesterday had been Tamburlaine’s fortress. Before that, if memory served, it had been a castle in some godforsaken drivel by Shaxsper. To say it had failed at the box office would be being kind to it, but the Warwickshire man worked for nothing and there was something to be said for having a grateful, if second-rate, playwright up your sleeve for when the Muse’s darling was elsewhere. And say what you liked about Shaxsper, he didn’t ask for the moon when it came to scenery. Blasted heaths, beaches, graveyards, he’d tried them all and although the plays had been rubbish, Tom Sledd was always home betimes when the scenery was being made for a Shaxsper epic, so his long-suffering wife always said the Warwickshire man was her favourite writer. Tom smiled to himself. Will would love to hear that; the hyste
rical laughter immediately afterwards, perhaps not so much.

  But Kit now, ah, Kit … he could weave magic out of thin air with his words, but the wood and canvas still had to be in place. He didn’t want much, he would always say. ‘Just the inner sanctum of a magus, Tom. Just the fires of Damnation.’ And now, the towers and turrets of the second greatest city in the world. Charles IX, King of France, was strutting around the stage, trying on his crown and getting in everybody’s way. The Lord High Admiral was fussing about his chain of office – it was way too heavy for an actor of his calibre; it weighed on his chest and interfered with his enunciation. Little Benny was doing his best with the hooped petticoat of Catherine de Medici, the Queen Mother; and he’d got to be better than best or Tom Sledd himself, stage manager to the great Philip Henslowe, owner of the Rose, would have to put on the frock and the lipstick once again. And then, the entire company would know all about it.

  ‘Kit!’ Sledd saw a flash of quicksilver out of the corner of his eye. ‘Holy Mass, Kit.’

  ‘What about it?’ Marlowe looked up at the rafters. This wasn’t his idea of Paris, either. ‘Act One, Scene One, if memory serves.’

  ‘Yes, and elsewhere. It’s just that … well, it’s a bit tricky, all things considered.’

  ‘Is it?’ Marlowe stood stock still and frowned at him. When Tom Sledd said things were tricky, it was as well to listen; the man could virtually weave gold out of straw.

  Sledd looked at the man. He would go through fire for Kit Marlowe, had gone through fire for him. But Kit Marlowe was a dangerous man to know. Working with him, drinking with him, even talking to him; it was all at your own risk. ‘Er … you do know there’s been a sort of Reformation in this country?’ Sledd checked.

  ‘Before my time, I’m afraid,’ Marlowe smiled, the dark eyes twinkling.

  ‘Yes, and mine, but even so – where am I going to get a crucifix?’

  Marlowe sighed and placed his hands on Sledd’s shoulders. ‘Tom, Tom,’ he said, softly. ‘This is a play called The Massacre at Paris. Paris is the capital of France and France – or at least most of it – is Catholic. The bit that isn’t is centred on La Rochelle. Now, I could have written a play called The Massacre at La Rochelle, except that there wasn’t one and that wouldn’t be fair to the fee-paying audience, would it? We have to have all the Papist claptrap or the whole play’s meaningless. Besides,’ Marlowe felt the lad’s shoulders sag, ‘you’re stage manager at the Rose, for God’s sake. Right-hand man to the great Philip Henslowe himself.’ He lowered his head and let his eyes burn into Sledd’s. ‘And I happen to know you can work miracles.’ He slapped his friend’s shoulder and spun away, making for the light.

  ‘Oh, Kit, I nearly forgot.’ Sledd was fumbling in his doublet pocket. ‘This came for you.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘A letter from Dowgate, the lad who brought it said.’

  ‘Dowgate?’ Marlowe took the folded vellum. ‘I don’t know anybody in Dowgate.’

  Sledd shrugged. ‘You do now,’ he said.

  The candles guttered that night in the Palace of Whitehall. The wind from the river blew the early Fall leaves around and rattled the shutters in the stables.

  Lord Burghley trembled a little these days. There had been a time when he had run from his great house along the Strand to Whitehall; now he was brought in a litter by men wearing the Queen’s livery. He preferred milk to a glass of Rhenish. His rheumatism plagued him and it was difficult to read by candlelight. But all that was between him and his Maker. The outside world must never know. Little Robert wasn’t ready, not yet. Burghley had made his dwarf son a Spymaster, but he was no Secretary of State.

  ‘How often have I told you, my boy?’ The old man looked across the vast table at his son, ‘Be neither Essex nor Ralegh.’

  ‘Not a good time to be either of them, father,’ the younger Cecil said. He had all his teeth and found the Burgundy refreshing as August faded to September and the Fall was in the wind.

  ‘What have you heard?’ Burghley leaned forward. He had spent too long in the summer at Hatfield. The younger Cecil was nearer to the pulse of things here in London, the heartbeat of the nation.

  ‘No more than you, father,’ the Spymaster assured him. ‘Ralegh is rotting in the Tower, thanks to his dalliance with Bess Throckmorton.’

  ‘You’ve got to keep up, Robyn. The Queen intends to release Ralegh on a damned fool expedition with his Devon sea-dogs.’

  ‘Really?’ Robert Cecil could play the innocent when he needed to, even with his father. He knew perfectly well what the Queen’s plans were.

  ‘It’ll all end in tears, of course,’ the old man sighed. ‘What of Essex?’

  ‘Kept his head down since the Queen recalled him from France.’ Cecil looked up sharply at the old man. ‘You were there, father. Just how angry was the Queen?’

  Burghley chuckled. ‘Let’s just say I’ve never seen the royal signet put to better use.’

  ‘Oh?’ Cecil was grinning along with his old man.

  ‘Split the bumptious little shit’s lip. It was a joy to behold. In the meantime,’ Burghley’s face fell, ‘I have more pressing problems.’

  ‘Purveyance,’ the Spymaster nodded grimly. ‘This Burgundy, for instance. The counties cutting up rough, eh?’

  ‘We don’t ask much of them,’ the old man spread his arms. ‘It’s their feudal obligation to cough up. The provisions for Her Majesty, that’s all.’

  ‘And Her Majesty’s government,’ Cecil spread the problem – and the cost – wider in four words.

  ‘It’s the damned Puritans,’ Burghley muttered, ‘and I speak as one of them.’

  Cecil raised an eyebrow. What he knew about his father’s religious beliefs would see the old man writhing in the fire, but now wasn’t the time to say so. There never would be a time.

  Burghley went on. ‘Know what they call Her Majesty’s government now? The Regnum Cecilianum, the rule of the Cecils! What nonsense!’

  ‘Nonsense, indeed,’ the younger man smiled. He changed the subject. ‘I hear there’s Pestilence in Dowgate ward.’

  Burghley nodded, ‘The blackest of deaths, Robyn. Can you leave London at the moment?’

  Cecil shook his head.

  ‘Nor me,’ the old man said. ‘We’ll just have to think pure thoughts and hope for the best.’

  ‘And put our trust in the Lord,’ Cecil added.

  ‘Oh, that too, of course.’

  TWO

  The mist wreathed from the river the next morning. In a day, it seemed, the summer that had brought the Pestilence had gone and a chill Fall had taken its place, creeping up the ramps where the wharf rats scurried, and coiling around the green, slime-coated props of the jetties.

  Marlowe walked along the road that skirted the steelyard. The clang of metal was all around him, even this early in the morning and the smiths’ fires belched flame and smoke as the hammers rang. Beyond that, the playwright might have been at home in his native Canterbury, the stench of the dyers’ and skinners’ crafts, cloth stretched on the tenter grounds and leather hanging to cure its putrefaction. The bright painted arms of the Worshipful Companies creaked in chains above the Walbrook, floating with only God-knew-what; the crowns and ermine of the Skinners’ Company, the tuns of the Innkeepers’.

  Marlowe turned the corner where the spire of St Michael Paternoster disappeared into the mist. The gravestones of the great and good lay crusted in lichen, leaning towards each other, the dead still whispering together after all these years, swapping secrets that were secret no longer. He saw them before they saw him, the constables of the Watch. They had not been relieved from the night before yet and they were cold and dripping with the morning dew dropping from their helmet rims and sparkling on the rimy stubble on their chins. They straightened at his arrival. A gentleman, they knew, by his doublet and Colleyweston cloak. Now, what was he doing in this God-forsaken part of London and at this hour of the day?

  ‘Morning, sir,’ o
ne of them hailed him. ‘You know we have the Pestilence here?’

  Marlowe nodded. He knew. He knew as every man knew. The sweating. The cough. Black swellings and rotting flesh. And over it all, the solemn tolling of the bell.

  ‘Better run far, run fast, then,’ the second constable muttered. Six hours pounding the unforgiving cobbles had done nothing for his bonhomie.

  ‘You’re still here,’ Marlowe pointed out. He had stopped walking now.

  ‘We’re Dowgate, born and bred,’ the first man said, shifting his weight as he leaned on his pike. ‘Besides, it’s our job.’

  ‘And mine,’ Marlowe smiled. ‘I have come to pay my respects to an old enemy.’

  The constables looked at each other.

  ‘It’s complicated,’ Marlowe laughed, sensing their confusion. ‘The cobbler’s house in Kyroun Lane – is this the way?’

  ‘Mrs Isam,’ the younger man nodded. ‘Yes. First left beyond the churchyard.’

  ‘You sure you won’t change your mind, sir?’ the first constable asked. ‘I wouldn’t have thought paying your respects to an enemy is worth dying for.’

  ‘Perhaps not.’ Marlowe turned as he went on his way. ‘As I said, it’s complicated.’

  The cobbler’s house was like any other. Kyroun Lane was like any other. Old buildings, mildewed with damp that had seeped into the oak timbers in the days of Geoffrey Chaucer, jostled each other, fighting for space, trying to breathe. Now and then was a gap, weed-strewn lumps of lathe and plaster the only remnants of a building which had lost the unequal struggle and collapsed with scarcely a sigh to the ground. It was a dull, grey day but Marlowe knew the sun never shone here. He rapped on the door, a rusty iron knocker echoing through the passages of the house. And he waited.

  A bonneted matron slid back the bolts and peered out at him.

  ‘I got a letter.’ Marlowe held it up. ‘From Robert Greene; late, I understand, of this house.’

  ‘You’ll be that Kit Marlowe,’ the woman said, looking him up and down.