Eleventh Hour Read online

  ‘I will never tire of seeing an Englishman meet his first pastel de nata,’ Salazar said, wiping his eyes with a lawn handkerchief. ‘The reaction is always the same.’

  Marlowe licked his lips to gather the random crumbs which had escaped and held out his plate for more. He was almost speechless with pleasure. ‘I don’t believe I have ever eaten anything so exquisite,’ he mumbled, his mouth already full.

  ‘We Portuguese are proud of our ugly little beauties,’ Salazar said with a smile. ‘Personally, I am fond of them not just because of their taste, which is of course like angels’ breath, but because of the beauty which is so much more than skin deep. Who would think, to look at one of these, what pleasures lie within. It is a philosophy which drives my work. When you have eaten your fill, I will show you my laboratory and you will see.’

  Marlowe looked anxiously across at the tray, counting silently to see how many more of the small wonders were still left.

  ‘The appetite of the young always amazes me,’ Salazar said. ‘When I was your age, I could eat a dozen of these at a sitting. Now, five is my limit. But, Master Marlowe, I will call Jorge and he will make a new batch, for your journey. How would that be?’

  Marlowe suddenly felt like a greedy schoolboy and stopped eating. This was not why he was here, although, as reasons went, the tarts were quite convincing. He swallowed the one he was in the middle of and resolutely put his plate aside, brushing crumbs from his fingers. ‘No, Master Salazar, though thank you. I would love to see your laboratory now, if you would be so kind.’

  Salazar quaffed the dregs of his Madeira and stood up. ‘Certainly, as long as you are sure.’ He looked down at the tray. ‘Just one more left, look.’

  Marlowe shook his head.

  ‘Perhaps later. This way,’ he pointed to a door Marlowe had not noticed before at the far end of the room. ‘My laboratory is through here.’

  Going ahead, he pushed the door open and to Marlowe’s surprise, they were outside in a small walled garden. In one corner, a brick building had been constructed, half leaning on the wall but with a soaring roof, rising to a point in the centre. There seemed to be no windows, but the chimney dribbled smoke; the only sign of life. Salazar caught Marlowe’s dubious look.

  ‘It doesn’t look much,’ he said, ‘but it is full of wonders. At least, I hope you will find it so.’ He reached inside the breast of his doublet and pulled out a small key. The keyhole it fitted was so small it was invisible in the grain of the wood and opening the door seemed almost in itself an act of sleight of hand. Just inside the door, a candle was burning in a covered lantern and Salazar reached in and lit a spill, which he used to light more in sconces around the walls, much after the arrangement in Percy’s secret room; but without the mirrors and crystals the light was altogether dimmer.

  Marlowe, standing behind Salazar, could at first see almost nothing, but he didn’t need the sense of sight. The smell that rollicked and rampaged out of the doorway was almost visible in its intensity. He had smelt all of its components before, just never all at once. There was a threat of Master Sackerson, of the mice in the wainscoting, of the sharp smell of a fox that had marked his trail on a frosty night. There was the smell of blood, too, of death and, hard and shrill above them all, the smell of fear. He stepped back, his hackles rising in sympathy.

  Salazar looked over his shoulder as he pinched out the taper and put it back on the shelf. He did not share his laboratory with many people, but he had been struck at how often they hung back, often refusing to enter at all. ‘Come along in, Master Marlowe,’ he encouraged. ‘You won’t be able to see much from outside.’

  ‘I apologize, Master Salazar,’ Marlowe said, trying to breathe through his mouth as much as possible, to minimize the smell. It reminded him of the dyeing houses which sprang up wherever the Huguenot weavers of his childhood set up shop along the Stour; the stench of urine made his eyes water. ‘I am finding the smell a little … bracing.’

  Salazar spread his nostrils and breathed in extravagantly. ‘Smell?’ He inhaled again. ‘No, I don’t really detect anything, Master Marlowe. Perhaps I have become used to it. Take a deep breath outside if it bothers you and I can show you around.’

  ‘I can manage, Master Salazar, please don’t trouble yourself.’ Marlowe stepped into the room and then became aware of something else; the sounds which came from every dark corner, of shuffling, snuffling, of breathing like the sigh of the stars in their courses. ‘This is your … menagerie?’

  ‘My laboratory,’ corrected Salazar, the fanatic’s gleam coming into his eye. It was hard to reconcile him with the man dishing out pastries and Madeira moments before, just yards away. He stepped into the middle of the room, deftly closing a ledger open on the table as he did so. ‘Here about us, Master Marlowe, is my Work. My Life’s Work. Come, come nearer.’ He beckoned and Marlowe stepped into a nightmare.

  No one had ever been able to accuse Marlowe of being soft-hearted to God’s creatures; if anything, he was oblivious most of the time. But there was something in the eyes that glowed from the backs of the cages that filled three walls of this prison that spoke to him, as if they were human. They cried out for his help, for his understanding. One and one only of Salazar’s captives sat at the front of the cage: a small capuchin monkey, its hands, so like his own, gripping the bars. It looked him full in the eyes and bared its teeth in the parody of an ingratiating smile. To all intents and purposes, it looked like any other creature any nobleman might have in his private menagerie, except that into its chest, someone – and it had to be Salazar – had carved an arcane symbol and had shaved the skin around it. The scar showed livid, puckered and raw, and the little monkey touched it from time to time, wincing when the pain was still there.

  Salazar approached the cage and stroked the little creature’s head. It didn’t flinch from his touch but rather leaned in to the caress. Marlowe could not hide his surprise. ‘You are wondering, Master Marlowe, I have no doubt, how it is that this animal does not fear me. And the answer is simple.’ The magician’s eyes glowed almost as brightly as those within the cages. ‘He knows that his pain has a reason. That, with his pain, he can bring me closer to my goal. And I suffer myself, Master Marlowe, as often as I can. But a man has only so much blood in him, after all. I can only sacrifice myself when I am strong enough. And when I am not,’ the entire room seemed to hold its breath, ‘I must have help.’ He turned his hot, fanatic’s eyes on Marlowe, who could think of nothing in reply. Salazar scratched the little monkey’s head with a sharp nail and it whimpered in pleasure. ‘I must have help,’ he whispered and leaned on the cage front, his eyes closed.

  Carefully, quietly, Marlowe trod gently backwards towards the doorway and it was only when he felt the mossy bricks beneath his feet that he ran.

  Marlowe erupted out of Salazar’s front door like a cork from a shaken bottle and was out in the lane in less time than a wink. But of Elias Carter, there was no sign. The horses were quietly cropping the grass on the side of the road and the sound of their strong teeth tearing at the clumps was a taste of normality that Marlowe was eager to embrace. He stood with his arm over his saddle, patting the dusty neck of his bay. Where was Carter? In normal circumstances, his absence wouldn’t have rattled him at all, but with the charnel-house smell of Salazar’s laboratory still at the back of his nose and the unearthly silence of the animals in their cages filling his head, he needed Carter to be where he left him; otherwise, he might be anywhere. He leaned against his horse’s neck and felt the sun-warmed bristle of its clipped mane, smelled the sweat and road-dust, breathing it in as though it were the costliest perfume. He closed his eyes and tried to banish for a while what he had seen.

  Suddenly, his head snapped up and he was alert; he could hear voices, distant voices. If it was Salazar or even Jorge, he would have to choose between being politic and polite, blaming a sudden rush of blood to the head or calling for the watch to have them locked up for their own protection. He had let d
own his guard in this strange place. His first reaction had been one of extreme caution, but he had been seduced by pastry and wine. Not for the first time, perhaps not for the last, but it had been unwise, no matter how he looked at it. His smile was rueful as he realized that at least there was one good thing in all of this. He would not have to explain himself to Francis Walsingham, God rest his soul, if soul or God there should be.

  The voices were not coming any closer and they sounded friendly, if not downright jovial. Keeping his horse as cover, he peered about him and finally decided on the direction; he was more than a little relieved to realize that the sound was coming not from the house behind him but from a small stand of trees a little further off down the lane. With his hand on the hilt of his dagger, he started off in the direction of the voices, but before he had taken many cat-like steps, three men suddenly emerged, one of them Carter. As the manservant saw Marlowe, he held up a hand in greeting and turned to the other two with words of farewell.

  They turned sharply and went off down the lane with a swaggering gait that reminded Marlowe of someone; he couldn’t quite place it, but he knew enough actors to be familiar with that self-satisfied strut. He shook his head and waited for Carter to reach him.

  ‘I’m sorry, Master Marlowe,’ Carter said, coming up to him at a trot. ‘I didn’t expect you to be so quick.’

  ‘Nor did I,’ Marlowe agreed, but was still rather displeased; Carter was meant to be his eyes and ears, not disappearing to play in the woods with cronies like some schoolboy. ‘Who were those men and why did you leave the spot? I might have needed you.’

  Carter looked crestfallen. ‘I do apologize, most heartily, Master Marlowe,’ he said. ‘I was sitting here, waiting, as we agreed, when those two men called me from the wood.’

  ‘And you went?’ Marlowe was aghast. This man was supposed to be watching his back and yet he hardly seemed able to watch his own.

  ‘I …’ Carter’s mother had once told him, long ago, that if he could say nothing sensible, it was better to say nothing at all. She had also told him that the moon was made of green cheese, so he picked and chose as to which of her wise saws to believe in. The former seemed to have some merit, so he shut his mouth.

  ‘Who were they?’

  Carter shrugged.

  ‘What did they want?’

  He had an answer to this one. ‘They had a flask …’

  ‘They wanted to share their drink with you. Any ideas as to why they might feel so generous?’

  Carter hadn’t really thought that one through. The flask had looked rather dirty and the alcohol smelled like something from a drain, so he had not partaken anyway. The further he was away from the two, the stranger the whole thing seemed. One minute he had been saying his invisible rosary, the next he was hobnobbing with a couple of … what? Cutpurses, to be sure. Marlowe had saved him from a fate which, if not worse than death, could actually have been death itself. He could not explain all this to Marlowe, so contented himself with a murmured apology.

  ‘We’ll say no more about it,’ Marlowe said, springing up into the saddle using the grass bank as a mounting stool. ‘If we see them on the road, we may investigate further, but for now, perhaps we can just take it as a lesson learned with no bones broken.’

  Carter bit back his natural tendency to tell him that, as a whippersnapper, he had no right to teach his grandmother to suck eggs. He knew he had had a narrow escape, in more than one way, so decided to simply play the humble manservant for as long as the cap fitted. He also mounted, checked that the bags and baggage were still present and correct and, with a click of the tongue, urged his horse round and back on to the road to London.

  ELEVEN

  Marlowe had walked along the Strand many times, past the great houses mellow in their stone. The Convent Garden stretched to his left, a convent no longer but the homes of the squatters and the dispossessed. He wondered how long it would be before the property men moved in, evicting the crawling things without ceremony or redress. To his right had once stood old John of Gaunt’s palace of the Savoy, but the peasants had torn it down in the hurling time before the Marleys had settled in Canterbury and the ghost of time-honoured Lancaster wandered there no more.

  The increasingly necessary Elias Carter had arranged this meeting. Sir Walter Ralegh was at home at Durham House along the river that morning and he would be pleased to receive a poet after his own heart.

  No one answered the heavy iron knocker that Marlowe rapped against the sturdy oak, but the door gave on its latch and he stepped inside. The hall was cool after the glare of the Strand sunshine and a curious smell hit Marlowe’s nostrils, still cringing a little after Salazar’s onslaught. In a dark corner, crated in rough wood and sacking, stood bales of dark leaves, dried and curling. Tobacco. It had to be. From the orchards of the Americas. A globe stood in another corner, inscribed with curious symbols. Leviathans crashed through the flowing waters and mermaids sat on the rocks where the lost land of Lyonesse stretched beyond the Lizard. In the third corner, the silver half armour that Ralegh wore as the captain of the Queen’s Guard stood on its frame, glowing in the half light from the open door that stood in the last corner.

  ‘Hello?’ Marlowe called, but all he heard was his own voice echoing back, muffled by the arras on the walls. This was odd. A man like Ralegh had people around him all the time, as far as the eye could see. Where were they? Especially on a day when the master was expecting guests.

  Marlowe crossed the hall and walked through the open door. A corridor with Dutch tiles on the floor stretched ahead, leading to another door. ‘Hello?’ There had to be somebody in. Through the warp of the coloured glass, he could see a figure in the orchard. Actually, two figures, standing close.

  ‘Sir Walter?’ Marlowe stepped off the terrace on to the close-cropped grass. Ralegh spun at the sound of his name, revealing an extremely flustered lady, whose breasts had spilled out of her bodice. Crimson with embarrassment where seconds before she had been rosy with lust, she was hauling down her farthingale. Ralegh, in the meantime, was fumbling with his codpiece. It was all a little too little. A little too late.

  ‘Damn you to Hell, sir! What do you mean … Marlowe? Is that you?’

  ‘Sir Walter,’ Marlowe thought it best to bow in the circumstances. At the very least, it stopped the necessity to find somewhere else to look. ‘If this is a bad time …’

  There was a commotion to Marlowe’s left and a knot of Ralegh’s staff arrived, as flustered as their master. ‘My apologies, Sir Walter,’ one of them muttered. ‘He barged his way in.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ Marlowe, who had never needed to barge his way in to anywhere in his life, faced the man down.

  ‘Swords, Scranton. Now!’ Ralegh barked. ‘Spanish School, Marlowe? Italian? It’s all one to me. All one to you?’

  ‘Spanish …? No, there’s no need …’

  Ralegh, suitably attired again, strode across the grass until his nose was inches from Marlowe’s. ‘When a man is caught with his Venetians down, he can go one of two ways,’ he hissed. ‘He can turn crimson and mumble his apologies. Or …’ he suddenly lashed out with his right hand, slapping Marlowe across the face, ‘he can call his discomfiter out. True, you are far enough below me in rank to be the shit on my shoes, but I am known for my magnanimity.’

  Marlowe’s hand was on the hilt of his dagger as his vision reeled from the blow. Ralegh saw the movement and stepped back out of harm’s reach. ‘You may wrestle with knives in alleyways, pizzle,’ he snarled. ‘A gentleman uses a sword.’

  Scranton came bustling out over the lawn with two rapiers half hidden under a cloak. ‘Either of these,’ Ralegh said, unlacing his doublet, ‘would buy a dozen plays from you. Take your pick.’

  ‘Sir Walter …’ Marlowe checked himself. He was as much of a hothead as the Devon man, but he had not come to pick a fight.

  ‘Choose!’ Ralegh shouted.

  Marlowe looked at the weapons again, one Italian, the c
raftsmanship of Milan, one Spanish, the cutting edge of Toledo. He snatched the one nearest to him. Ralegh snorted and took the other one, bending the sprung blade and extending both his sword arm and his right leg, balancing himself in readiness.

  ‘Walter,’ the lady spoke for the first time. She crossed to him, turning her back on Marlowe so that he couldn’t see her face. ‘If you know this man, let it go. Isn’t it embarrassing enough, without … you don’t know how good he is.’

  ‘Please,’ Ralegh chuckled. ‘He’s Kit Marlowe, the son of a Canterbury cobbler. I’m amazed he knows which end to hold that thing.’

  Marlowe was going through none of the elaborate Italian moves that Ralegh was using. He calmly passed his dagger to Scranton and stood facing Ralegh.

  ‘Gentlemen,’ Scranton cleared his throat. ‘Come to the point.’

  Both of them, their doublets dropped, their lawn sleeves rolled, closed so that the tips of their blades touched. Scranton took hold of each and steadied them. ‘A fight to the finish, Sir Walter?’ he asked.

  ‘You know there’s no other kind, Scranton,’ Ralegh said. ‘To the finish, Marlowe?’

  This was insanity and Marlowe knew it. But men died every day in affairs of honour like this: a chance remark, a careless slur; even a glance could set blades clashing. And many was the mother’s son who would not be coming home tomorrow. Against that, the Queen’s command to shorten the length of rapier blades at court looked rather feeble.

  ‘Walter.’ The lady spoke again, loudly now and with eyes filled with tears. ‘For the love of God!’

  ‘For the love of you, Bess,’ Ralegh smiled. ‘Get on with it, Scranton.’

  ‘En garde!’ the flunkey growled, throwing both sword points into the air and stepping back. Both men locked their free arms behind their backs and bent their knees, their blades scraping together as they moved. Ralegh blinked first, his blade licking under Marlowe’s and probing for his ribs. The Canterbury man was faster, parrying and regaining his footing on the still dewy grass.