Crimson Rose Read online

  ‘You are familiar with the term?’ Thynne checked.

  ‘Of course I am,’ Henslowe fumed. ‘And if you are insinuating that I am a pimp, a serving man in a bawdy house …’

  ‘Well?’ Thynne raised a dismissive eyebrow.

  ‘I own three of them,’ Henslowe roared. ‘The Punk Alice along Rose Alley. The Upright Man in Maiden Lane—’ Suddenly he stopped, realizing the extent to which he had incriminated himself.

  An eerie sound rattled across the stage of the Rose; it was the sound of Hugh Thynne laughing. ‘Don’t worry, Master Henslowe,’ he chuckled, ‘I know the haunts you own and what goes on in them. I can close you down with a click of my fingers.’ He stepped closer to Henslowe and leaned in. ‘Do we have an understanding? About the warrant, I mean?’

  Henslowe licked his lips and turned to Thynne’s men, already dispersing in pursuit of their enquiries. ‘Search away, lads. We’ve nothing to hide here.’ He dashed across the O and hurtled behind the gates of Babylon, already in position for the afternoon’s sell-out performance of Tamburlaine. ‘Tom, Tom,’ he hissed. ‘He’s not here, is he?’

  Sledd looked at him, aghast. ‘No! I told Thynne, he’s in the Clink.’

  Henslowe waved him away. ‘Just checking, Tom, I know you don’t tell me everything that goes on here.’

  ‘But …’ Sledd had been brought up on the road, with a troupe of vagabonds and thieves, most of whom wouldn’t know the truth if it got up and hit them round the head with a spade. But, against all the odds, he was probably the most truthful man in London.

  ‘No, no, don’t tell me. Best I don’t know. Just get up to my office, will you? I don’t want those flat-footed boobies ferreting about in my chest.’ He tutted and rolled his eyes to the Heavens. ‘God’s teeth! Give me an honest thief any day.’

  Robert Greene, scholar of St John’s College, Cambridge, went to St Paul’s Cross that morning, in search of likely lads. As he watched the sun sparkling on the waters of the river, his task seemed as unlikely as something in a dream and he half expected to wake up any minute. As he turned to his left and saw the carrion kites wheeling over the bridge, swooping for their breakfast on the traitors’ heads on their pikes at the far end, the dream became a nightmare.

  The din of the city was already starting up, the shouts of the watermen, ‘Eastward ho!’ and ‘Westward ho!’ echoing and re-echoing in the Vintry. Greene had been in London long enough to know which areas to avoid. Even in broad daylight he’d never venture into Alsatia, the Bermudas or Damnation Alley – he’d lose a lot more than his dignity if he ventured there. He crossed the Fleet Ditch and walked on up Ludgate. As he turned the half corner the smell hit him first, then the clamour. Hands were clawing at him through the bars of the grille at the gaol. ‘Alms, sir. For the love of God.’

  Greene ignored them. He had places to be and the sweepings of the prison held no interest for him. On the hill ahead, St Paul’s rose in its granite vastness, dwarfing the little rickety houses lying round it. Yesterday had been an execution day and the temporary scaffold still stood there, to the left of the crowd at the Cross. Judging by the ankle-deep garbage that Greene trudged through, the crowd had been sizeable. The crowd there now were standing fascinated by a preacher in black from head to foot, haranguing them. ‘Beware,’ he was bellowing over the clash of the city and the lowing cattle on their way to Paradise by way of Smithfield, ‘for the Devil is among you.’ Greene was confident he didn’t mean him but as always when near a mob of the great unwashed, he kept his purse tight about him and his hand on his sword hilt.

  Greene knew St Paul’s Walk. Like so many gulls new to the city he had lost his gold on his first visit there. He wasn’t about to make the same mistake. In the south aisle, he knew, the usurers gathered, those strange bearded Jews from Portugal, with their skull-caps and clipped way of talking. They were rarer than blackamoors, but if you found them anywhere in London it would be St Paul’s Walk, where their great-great-grandfathers had spat at the man in their own Damascus. Here, too, although Greene didn’t know it, Papists conversed in hurried, whispered conversations, spreading the vital news of their detested heresy. Like most vain people, Greene took little notice of anything more than an inch from the end of his nose and he would have passed the Pope himself without a second glance. The north aisle was already crawling with clerics hungry for a living and pestering anyone wearing an ecclesiastic robe just in case he was their ticket to a comfortable future.

  At Duke Humphrey’s tomb the beggars clustered, in assorted rags and smelling like the Fleet Ditch. He didn’t linger long there, in case someone assumed he, too, was of their persuasion; although surely, no one so well dressed could be thought to dine regularly with the Duke. There was the usual crowd at the Si Quis Door, scanning the notices flapping in the breeze. Some of the more generous were reading out the job offers to those who couldn’t manage the long words and Greene toyed briefly with posting a notice himself: ‘If anyone wants to take down an arrogant whoreson playwright a peg or two, please apply …’ But then he realized he didn’t have to.

  A cripple was dragging himself across the sunlit floor. He was grey and bent, his rags sweeping the flags and he hobbled on a crutch, a useless stump waving to one side of it. ‘The Dons took my leg, sir,’ the man was saying to a gentleman who stood there, at once appalled and transfixed by the beauty and the squalor of the place, ‘at those islands men call the Hesperides.’

  The gentleman’s lady was leaning forward, a gentle look on her face. ‘You poor man,’ she was saying. ‘Have you no pension?’

  The cripple looked at her, uncomprehendingly. ‘Pension, lady? I sailed as a privateer, madam. The Queen don’t pay us, because we don’t fly her colours.’

  ‘That’s dreadful,’ said the lady, reaching out with a kid-gloved hand, only to change her mind at the last minute. ‘Ralph,’ she looked up at her husband. ‘Give this poor man some money.’

  ‘Well, now, wait a minute …’ Ralph was by no means sure he wanted to share his worldly goods, even a little of them, with this ragged privateer.

  ‘Now, Ralph,’ his lady insisted, with a small edge creeping in to her voice.

  Ralph sighed and, half turning from the beggar, tugged a couple of coins from his purse.

  ‘I said “some money”, Ralph,’ his wife said frostily, ‘not “an insult”.’ And, sighing, the hapless Ralph added more to his handout.

  ‘God bless you both,’ the beggar croaked, tugging his forelock as he hobbled away. He made for the Si Quis Door and Greene followed him. Once through the throng, the cripple’s dragging walk mysteriously speeded up and he vanished around a corner. Greene stopped and waited. It may be he was wasting his time, but he had a sixth sense about this man.

  As he twisted around the buttress, a miracle happened. Not only was the beggar a head taller than he had been, he seemed to have shed fifteen years and grown a new leg. That was the one he was rubbing now, to bring the feeling back into it. Alongside him lay a leather harness, the one that had pinned the limb up into his tattered Venetians a moment ago. Alongside him too, another man was counting out coins, including the goodly handful just wrested from Ralph, via his soft-hearted wife.

  ‘Bravo!’ Greene cried, clapping his hands slowly. ‘I’ve never seen it better done. But what are you, exactly? A whipjack or a ruffler?’

  The beggar looked confused and decided to brazen it out. The roisterer standing there, hands on hips, wasn’t a constable nor even a catchpole. No need to feel his ears burning just yet. ‘I’m afraid I don’t …’

  ‘Beg for a living, pretending to be a soldier? Or a man who has suffered losses at sea … yes, you do, I’ve just seen you do it.’

  ‘All right,’ the ex-beggar’s accomplice said flatly. ‘You know thieves’ cant and you’ve caught out my friend here. The question is … are you going to live to tell the tale?’ Suddenly there was a knife in his hand and he was on his feet. Greene stepped backwards, his hand on his sword-hilt again.


  ‘Gentlemen, gentlemen,’ he said quickly. ‘You misunderstand. I have need of your services.’

  ‘Oh?’ said the newly restored cripple. ‘For what?’

  Greene came as close as he dared, trying to ignore the blade inches from him. ‘Does the name Christopher Marlowe mean anything to you?’

  ‘It might,’ the knife man said.

  ‘He’s a playwright,’ the cripple said, still flexing his leg and fumbling behind him for his boot. ‘His Tamburlaine’s playing at the Rose.’

  ‘That’s right.’ The other one slipped his knife away in an economic movement borne of long practice. ‘He’s a genius, some say.’

  ‘That’s right,’ his friend agreed.

  ‘That’s not right!’ Greene tried to prevent his voice sounding too shrill and all but succeeded. ‘The man is a purloiner of other people’s creation. I wrote Tamburlaine.’

  ‘Did you now?’ said the money man, turning to his friend. ‘This is the real genius, Ing.’

  ‘I knew it, Nick.’ The erstwhile cripple stood up and stamped around to remind himself where his toes used to be. ‘Genius will always out, they say.’

  ‘This Marlowe,’ the other man said. ‘What do you want done to him? And who are you, as a matter of fact? We don’t do … jobs for just anyone.’

  ‘I am Robert Greene,’ he announced. ‘Poet and playwright. And you are …?’

  The man got up and bowed with a flourish. ‘Nicholas Skeres, ruffler, whipjack, palliard and, if needs must, a prigger of prancers. My badly dressed friend here is Ingram Frizer – largely the same qualifications, but not so good.’

  ‘Stow you!’ Frizer spat. ‘Well, Master Greene,’ he beamed, ‘I believe Nick asked which of our many skills you require. Throat-slitting comes extra.’

  ‘It does.’ Skeres nodded solemnly. ‘We have our own blades, of course, but there’s the cost of hiding out in the country.’

  ‘New clothes,’ Frizer added. ‘You can rarely get the stains out.’

  ‘True,’ Skeres agreed. ‘Sometimes, we even need a passport …’

  ‘Dear God, no,’ Greene said.

  Frizer looked at Skeres. ‘Doesn’t look like a big payer, Nick,’ he said.

  ‘You’re right.’ Skeres nodded.

  ‘It’s not the money, gentlemen,’ Greene assured them. ‘It’s the task. I don’t want Marlowe dead. Just … well, done down, shall we say?’

  ‘In what way,’ Frizer asked, ‘done down?’

  ‘I’m not sure.’

  Skeres raised his hands to Heaven. ‘I’m not getting a good feeling about this, Ing.’

  ‘Nor am I, Nick.’

  ‘Can you read?’ Greene asked them.

  ‘Does Master Sackerson eat hounds for breakfast?’

  ‘Here.’ He handed Skeres a piece of parchment. The man read it. ‘“Dr Gabriel Harvey. At the sign of the Coiled Serpent.” Is that an apt address, Master Greene?’

  ‘This morning, if you have time,’ Greene said. ‘He’ll be expecting you.’

  ‘How about the retainer?’ Frizer asked, holding out his hand.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ Greene said, scowling, ‘how remiss of me,’ and he threw a silver coin which Skeres caught expertly.

  ‘That will turn miraculously to gold when the job’s done,’ Greene said. ‘As miraculously as growing a new leg.’

  He turned back to the Si Quis Door and bought an oyster from a pale-faced waif standing in the Mediterranean Aisle. He would have liked to have known what Gabriel Harvey had in mind before he hired Frizer and Skeres on his behalf, but in a way, not knowing had its advantages – he could indulge his imagination all the more.

  Greene was halfway down Ludgate Hill before he found his way blocked by two burly men wearing the cross and sword of the City on their breasts. They were looking intently at him.

  ‘Master Greene?’ one of them asked. The playwright spun on his pattens and strode back up the hill, only to bump into two more men, wearing the same livery, blocking his path. For a moment, he toyed with ducking into Sea Coal Lane but the alley was narrow and his chance of outrunning four of them was remote. He felt a time-honoured hand on his shoulder and he was turned again. ‘I said “Master Greene?”’

  The Cambridge man decided to brazen it out. By comparison with half the denizens of St Paul’s behind him, he was a paragon of virtue. ‘I am Greene,’ he said, mustering all his poise and arrogance and shrugging off the restraining hand.

  ‘I am Constable Harrison,’ the man said, ‘and you are under arrest.’

  ‘Where is your magistrate’s warrant?’ Greene asked. He’d get to the charge later.

  ‘Here!’ said Harrison and he drove his fist into the playwright’s face. For Greene, day became night and he slumped backwards into the arms of Harrison’s catchpoles. ‘Well, well,’ the Constable said. ‘What a coincidence. Here we are with a felon on our hands and just over there is Ludgate Gaol. Lively, now, lads. Let’s get him out of the way. Last thing we want is a riot over the heavy-handed tactics of the authorities.’

  And they carried Greene away, Harrison unhooking the man’s expensive sword in case somebody hurt themselves.

  Kit Marlowe’s horse clattered under the archway and up the rise to the White Tower. The ravens fluttered and croaked across the broad sweep of the grass as a Yeoman warder took the horse’s reins and let its rider pass. The seal of Dr John Dee on the parchment he carried opened doors in this bleak place that the Yeoman warder didn’t even know existed.

  Marlowe flashed his warrant again at the outer door and padded down the stone steps into the Armoury. Ahead of him, astride a massive wooden destrier, sat an image of the Queen’s father, King Harry, in his armour for the tilt. The painted eyes behind the visor bars seemed to move as Marlowe watched them and he felt for all the world that he had stepped back into Dr Dee’s study, where serpents coiled and demons lurked.

  ‘Master Marlowe?’ He turned at the sound of his name. A square, squat man with a scarred face and wearing the livery of the Queen emerged from a side door and crossed the floor to him. Marlowe took the proffered hand. ‘William Waad, Lieutenant of the Tower. To what do I owe the pleasure?’

  ‘You were expecting me, sir?’ Marlowe was surprised. Even in this city of rumours, the speed astonished him. He had only left John Dee a matter of hours before.

  ‘Look about you, sir.’ Waad smiled. ‘This is the White Tower, a royal residence. You were, just last night, in another one – Whitehall. All the residences have a means of communication. It’s done by mirrors.’ He saw the uncertainty on Marlowe’s face. ‘I could tell you how it’s done,’ he chuckled, ‘but then, of course, I’d have to kill you.’

  There was something about the man that made Marlowe think perhaps he wasn’t joking.

  ‘How’s Francis?’ Waad asked, ushering Marlowe into a side chamber.

  ‘Francis?’

  Waad looked at him. He’d heard all about Marlowe. The man was fire and air, a University wit and a ready blade. Had a mind like a Toledo rapier … and yet … ‘Francis Walsingham,’ Waad explained. ‘His uncle was a predecessor of mine here at the Tower.’

  ‘It’s a small world.’ Marlowe smiled, but he had no intention of sharing more confidences with this man than he needed to. ‘Don’t know him.’

  Liar, thought Waad. He knew Walsingham had recruited Marlowe at Cambridge and, once recruited by Walsingham, you stayed recruited. But each man, Intelligencer or not, had his reasons and found his own way in the world. If Marlowe chose not to know the Queen’s Spymaster, so be it. ‘So,’ Waad poured a goblet of finest claret and passed it to his visitor, ‘to your purpose.’

  ‘A snaphaunce,’ Marlowe told him. ‘Dr Dee tells me your Armoury has the only one in England.’

  ‘Ah,’ Waad became confidential. ‘Not for sale, I’m afraid.’

  ‘I don’t want to buy it,’ Marlowe told him. ‘Merely to look at it. Handle it, perhaps.’

  Waad sucked his teeth. ‘Well,’ he sai
d slowly, ‘it does come under the Res Novae category.’

  ‘Res Novae?’ Marlowe queried.

  Oh dear, thought Waad. This wasn’t going well at all. Perhaps this wasn’t the real Kit Marlowe. ‘New things,’ he translated. ‘In Latin.’

  Marlowe smiled and said, ‘Nouveauté, νεʹα πραʹγματα, nieuwe dingen … I understand it, Sir William. I just don’t know what it means.’

  ‘Oh, I see.’ Waad beamed. ‘Yes, of course. Quite. Well, here at the Armoury we are constantly experimenting with new gadgets. Bristle letters. Aqua Fortis.’ He clapped a hand over his own mouth. ‘There!’ he scolded himself. ‘I’ve said too much already. Please forget what I’ve just said. State secrets. National treasures. That sort of thing.’

  ‘The snaphaunce?’

  ‘Yes.’ Waad clicked his fingers, glad to be moving on. ‘You’ll have to sign the book, of course.’

  ‘Of course.’ Marlowe took the proffered quill and wrote his name in the large ledger open on Waad’s desk. He quickly read down the other names on the page, but there were none that he recognized. Waad led him through a small door that all but disappeared in a book case and took Marlowe along a narrow, dark passageway lit by small, high barred windows and a solitary taper burning at the far end. Here was another door and Waad unlocked it before stepping inside.

  ‘Look at nothing around the walls,’ Waad warned him. ‘This –’ he hauled a gun from a rack – ‘is the weapon you seek.’

  ‘So this is a snaphaunce.’ Marlowe weighted it, cocked it, saw at once the pecking bird of the mechanism.

  ‘It is. They say,’ Waad dropped his voice and closed in so his chin was almost on Marlowe’s shoulder, ‘that the Dons have a similar device they call a miquelet.’ He stepped back and spoke more normally. ‘So you see why we need to develop this as soon as we can. What is your interest, exactly?’

  From what Walsingham had told Waad of Kit Marlowe, he wasn’t likely to be spying for the Spaniards, but this was a dangerous, topsy-turvy, brave new world and who could be sure of anyone or anything in it?

  ‘This gun could have been used to kill a woman in the Rose Theatre, Sir William.’ Marlowe looked at the lieutenant and saw that the avid gleam that lit everyone’s eye when gruesome murder was abroad was in his now. ‘I see you know of it.’