Crimson Rose Read online

  ‘I don’t know, sir. This was the Master’s study. I didn’t meddle.’

  If truth be told – and when was it told in London in that year of the Queen’s grace? – Under Constable Rogers was wasted as a cordwainer. He was a perfectly competent craftsman, but he had an eye for detail, for what was amiss, especially in little rooms. If this was Garrett’s study, where were his books, his inkwells and quills? Where were his papers? The room was altogether too empty.

  Rogers tapped on the linen fold cupboard. ‘Is there a key for this?’ he asked the old man.

  ‘The Master had it, sir. Kept it round his neck, I seem to remember.’

  Rogers nodded. He’d seen the man’s corpse laid out at the Rose; stripped of his shirt and cap, a deep, dark gash marking the entrance to his heart. And the key had still been there, tied to a leather thong. He hauled out his tipstaff and smashed the wood around the lock. Much to the old man’s alarm, splinters flew everywhere and Rogers let the door swing wide. Inside the recess was a gown, coal black in keeping with the dead man’s religious persuasion and, tucked almost out of sight, a chest. It had a domed top and was covered in brass studs. Rogers dragged the chest out of the cupboard and stepped to one side to allow what light there was to fall on it. On closer inspection, Rogers could make out the words the studs spelled out. ‘God helps those who help themselves,’ he read, half aloud. This was locked too, but a quick tap with the tipstaff was all that was needed to smash off the brass lock.

  Rogers squeezed his fingertips into the gap between lid and box and eased the lid up. Looking down into the box, he expected to find books, Gospels, other tokens of the Godly. Instead, he could hardly believe his eyes. There was money. So much money. He ran his fingers through it, letting the gold and silver trickle through them. There was a queen’s ransom here, more than he could make in a lifetime stitching somebody else’s leather.

  ‘Did you know about this?’ Rogers asked the old man.

  ‘No, sir,’ he told him, wide-eyed and shaking. He put out a hand to the softly glowing gold, but then withdrew it, as if he feared the coins would bite. He could hardly believe that the floorboards had borne the weight of it all.

  ‘What’s your name?’ Rogers asked the old man.

  ‘Partridge, sir. Thomas Partridge.’

  ‘How long have you been Master Garrett’s man, Partridge?’ Rogers said.

  ‘All my life, sir. I worked on his father’s estates in the country before he saw the light.’

  ‘Saw the light?’

  ‘Of God’s bounty, sir. The Master – that’s Master Garrett’s father, I mean – gave away all he had to serve the Lord.’

  ‘Gave it all away?’ Rogers repeated. ‘So what’s all this, then?’

  ‘As God is my judge, sir, I have no idea.’

  ‘What did your master actually do, Partridge? When he wasn’t screaming at people in theatres, that is?’

  ‘He was a guildsman, sir, of the Haberdasher’s Company.’

  ‘Lot of money in that, is there?’ Rogers asked, still stroking and fondling the coins. ‘In haberdashery?’

  Partridge came closer to look at the contents of the chest. ‘I didn’t know there was this much money in the world, sir, and that’s a fact.’

  Rogers rocked back on his heels. None of this made sense. Garrett’s house may have been new to him, but it was no more than he expected of the Godly. The furnishings were scant and worn, the plaster peeling in the corners, where the damp had penetrated. Draughts whistled past every door jamb and rattled loose window panes as the sneaky spring wind came in from the south-west. Old Partridge didn’t look as if he had had a square meal in years and his clothes were older even than he was.

  ‘What was he going to do with this, do you know?’

  ‘As I told you, sir, I didn’t know it existed until now. The Master did say he would leave money in his will for sermons to be read in his name.’

  ‘How many sermons?’

  ‘Four or five,’ the old man told him, with a shrug.

  Rogers knew that was a pittance in the scheme of things.

  ‘Of course …’ Partridge had suddenly remembered something.

  ‘Yes?’ Rogers looked at him.

  ‘Well, the Master had a dream, sir. He wanted to quit London. Pandemonium, he called it, the gateway to Hell. He’d read that Captain Frobisher has found a new land – Terra Incognita, it’s called. It is a land of purity, sir, all ice and snow, the colour of innocence. He and the Brethren often talked of it. A brave new world, he called it. A chance to begin again in a new-found land, where there are no theatres, no drink, no cut-purses or bawdy houses. A place a man can walk and talk with God.’

  Rogers nodded. ‘But in the real world,’ he said, ‘such paradises would, I think, cost a fortune to set up.’ He looked at the heap of coins. ‘This fortune.’

  ‘Rogers!’ he heard Harrison call from the floor below. ‘Anything?’

  ‘Up here, sir,’ the Under Constable said. He moved closer to Partridge. ‘What becomes of you now, old man?’ he asked.

  Partridge shrugged. ‘I am a Masterless man, sir. The Brethren will take over the house and give it to another of their number to live in. Once we have interred the Master, my duty is done.’

  Rogers came to a split-second decision. He grabbed two handfuls of coins and stuffed them into the pocket at the front of the old man’s apron. ‘Find yourself that new land,’ he whispered quietly. ‘That Terra Incognita. The Master would have wanted it.’

  Enoch Harrison’s head popped up through the floor space. There had been a movement he hadn’t quite caught. Had Rogers just slipped something to the serving man? He couldn’t be sure. But a second later his eyes were elsewhere. They focussed on God’s Word Garrett’s chest and they lit up.

  It took the High Constable’s clerk nearly three hours to count all the money from John Garrett’s chest. That was because Sam Renton was meticulous and he did it three times, as was the High Constable’s order whenever it came to money.

  ‘Tell me again.’ Hugh Thynne was puffing on his pipe in the low-ceilinged room over the stables.

  Enoch Harrison sat facing him. He’d been on his feet since just after dawn and wasn’t feeling at one with the world. He knew the High Constable of old and knew that Thynne would want every one of Garrett’s pennies accounted for. That was why he had helped himself to a third of it. As soon as Rogers and the old man had gone, Harrison had been on his knees scooping handfuls of coins out of the Puritan’s chest and into his purse and wallets. He waited until the pair had left the building before he moved, for fear of clinking too loudly with his booty. It was safe now, stashed under the eaves of his house in the lee of the Crutched Friars, hard by Goodman’s Fields.

  ‘Nothing to tell.’ He shrugged. ‘The old serving man told Rogers that the Presician had this dream, of setting up some sort of kingdom of the Godly. The only problem is he wanted to do it in some Godless land, far away.’

  ‘Did the old man say where the money came from?’

  Harrison shook his head. ‘Claimed never to have seen it before.’

  ‘And you believed him?’

  ‘’Course I didn’t. If I’d had my way I’d have kicked the old bastard down the stairs and trod on his fingers until he came clean. But Rogers was there.’

  ‘Oh. Yes.’ Thynne remembered. ‘Under Constable, isn’t he? Pretty bright fellow, I understand.’

  ‘Bright, my arse,’ Harrison grumbled. ‘The man’s an idiot. Doesn’t understand how the world turns. Now you and I are men of the world, sir. We know a hawk from a handsaw.’

  ‘Indeed we do, Constable.’ Thynne was elsewhere, watching the smoke curling away to the plastered ceiling. ‘Indeed we do. Whatever that means – I’ve always wondered.’

  ‘Any news, sir,’ Harrison said after a while, ‘on the Bancroft case? Eleanor Merchant?’

  Thynne sat up straight and he looked at the man. ‘Now, what makes you ask about them?’ he wondered.


  ‘Oh, just idly curious,’ the Constable said. ‘Just doing my job.’

  ‘I was a bit surprised, to be honest,’ Thynne commented.

  ‘What, about me asking about those murders?’

  ‘No. About how little, for a man going to start a New World, God’s Word Garrett had in his attic.’

  Marlowe often spent the night other than in his own bed and in the last few years of his life had slept under wagons, in hayricks, standing up and in the saddle. But he had never spent a worse night than the one he had just spent at Walsingham’s house at Barn Elms. With the master of the house so often away, the staff had grown not just lax but downright disrespectful and once Faunt had left to make his way back to his own home upriver, Marlowe was left to the mercy of a footman and a maidservant who were so dismissive of their guest that he almost expected them to give him their boots to clean, rather than the other way about. Breakfast had been the same as supper, with the bitten bits cut away, and this was served by leaving a tray outside his room, in itself little more than a garret up in the eaves of the West Wing. In short, he was glad to find himself aboard a boat, heading for the Bancroft house at Queenshythe. No sailor, he was nevertheless happy to be going somewhere where there may be something worth eating and someone who would at least wish him the time of day without a sneer.

  The boat bumped gently against the jetty at the bottom of the grounds of the Bancroft house and, while the waterman tied up, Marlowe took in the view. The lawns were not spacious and no deer cropped the grass, but the whole had been designed to give an impression of space and grandeur and Marlowe was impressed. It was almost unbelievable that this house was less than half a mile from St Paul’s, as the crow flew, and that wharves and jetties jostled its garden walls up and down stream. It could have been a country estate anywhere in the kingdom, in miniature. The house was so new that there was still a workman precariously balanced on a ladder and being berated by a foreman standing below on the ground. The man had one foot on a pediment below a window and he was putting a final touch to some elaborate strapwork on a gable end. Marlowe would have wished him good morning, but had a definite dislike of seeing men plummet from ladders, so crept quietly past and round to the front of the house.

  At the front, the house was less countrified, but still quite distinct from its neighbours. The tobacco trade was clearly doing well. He knocked on the door with his knuckles; there was something about the huge Italianate lion’s head knocker that was quite off-putting and its pristine gloss suggested that most other callers felt the same. The sound of a lute, issuing from an open window above his head, stopped, but not until it had wound up the figure to a harmonious conclusion. The choirboy still inside the playwright gave thanks; without that courtesy, he would have had the threads of the tune in his head all day.

  The door was pulled open on its stiff new hinges by an overdressed maidservant. She had a white cap on her head and a stuff gown, with a boned bodice which must surely have made any kind of housework all but impossible. She looked with wide eyes at Marlowe, but didn’t speak. He put her out of her misery. ‘Christopher Marlowe,’ he said. ‘Here to see Mistress Bancroft.’

  The girl still stood as though turned to stone, but was relieved of her duty by a man’s voice from halfway up the curving stair. ‘Thank you, Lettice. I will see to the gentleman. You may get back to your work.’ Bobbing a curtsey, the girl disappeared through a door at the rear of the hall.

  ‘You must excuse Lettice,’ the man said, coming down the last few steps. ‘She’s new. We find it difficult to keep staff here, being out of town, as they see it. How can I help you? I am Thaddeus Bancroft … but, wait. You are Christopher Marlowe!’ He shook his visitor’s hand.

  ‘I am indeed,’ Marlowe said. ‘And I know your face from somewhere …’

  ‘I am an investor in the Rose!’ Bancroft told him. ‘How extraordinary you should be here. And, did I hear correctly, you want to speak to my cousin, Mistress Bancroft?’

  ‘I want to speak to Mistress Bancroft. I didn’t know she was your cousin.’

  ‘Well, to be more precise, the relict of my cousin Simon. Simon Bancroft. He has recently …’ He dropped his voice. ‘He has recently died. More than that, I fear. I believe he –’ and here he dispensed with sound altogether and mouthed – ‘took his own life.’

  Marlowe feigned astonishment. ‘My condolences. I am very sorry for your loss and in such circumstances.’

  ‘Thank you, Master Marlowe,’ the tobacconist said. ‘His widow is still prostrate and also, naturally, protesting that he would have done no such thing. But of course, a death is in itself hard to bear, without that added stigma. No funeral or what have you to assuage the pain.’

  ‘I understand. She is lucky to have you to comfort her.’

  Bancroft lowered his head and coloured slightly. ‘I do what I can,’ he said. ‘Mary and I have always been … close, and I hope to make her closer still. When she is out of mourning, I intend to make her my wife.’

  Marlowe, the man of the world, was stuck for what to say. With her husband hardly cold and by his own hand, any kind of congratulations seemed a little out of place. He settled for a smile.

  ‘Yes, indeed. My wife. I look forward to it. I have never married, Master Marlowe. The Bancrofts are not emotional by nature. We have all, my brothers, my cousins and I, been brought up to live in the world of money. We have not all been fortunate. My brother Thomas, for example … But I digress. It was not until I saw how Simon’s coldness distressed Mary that I realized how little money means, in the end. Then, there he lay, dead and cold on that slab in that horrible little room, consigned to the worms in some unconsecrated corner of a churchyard who knows where. And there was Mary, crying for him anyway … I realized then …’ He seemed to come to his senses and coughed to cover his confusion. ‘Well, anyway, Master Marlowe, as a playwright you are obviously a man of some emotion. You know how I felt. How I feel.’

  Marlowe was still mulling over what kind of man would be lying in wait for his cousin’s widow, but he managed to nod.

  ‘And now, you are here to see Mary. May I ask why?’

  ‘I can tell you something of why I need to speak to her, but if you have lived here for some time, you may be able to tell me yourself. If she is still upset, that is.’

  ‘I have always lived with Simon and Mary. It is cheaper to live together if one can.’

  ‘Yes, indeed. Then you can help me. I believe your cousin may have purchased a snaphaunce …’

  ‘A what?’ Bancroft looked puzzled.

  ‘A snaphaunce. A kind of gun. A pair was given to the Queen. One is in the Tower. Your cousin may have purchased the other. We know it was purchased by a tobacconist, and, as your cousin has recently been found dead … well, it is a chance I thought it was worth following up.’

  ‘I am also a tobacconist.’ Bancroft made the statement with no inflection.

  Marlowe opened his eyes wide and stared at the man. ‘You are also a tobacconist?’ Was there no limit to what these cousins shared?

  ‘Yes. But I didn’t purchase the sn … what did you say?’

  ‘Snaphaunce.’

  ‘I did not purchase it. I have no interest in firearms and I am not as free with my money as Simon was. He may have bought it. If so, it will be in his ledger.’

  ‘Simon Bancroft kept a ledger? Of his personal purchases?’

  Bancroft looked at him as though he were mad. ‘Of course. Doesn’t everyone?’

  Marlowe shrugged. The Bancroft house was not just out of town. It was in a different world. ‘May I see it?’

  ‘Of course,’ Bancroft said. ‘Follow me.’ He took Marlowe upstairs and showed him in to a beautiful room with a wide window overlooking the river. A book lay on a desk in front of the glass. Marlowe suspected that should he ever have such a room, with such a desk in it, he would not write quite so fast; most of his time would be spent on the view.

  ‘I will leave you to look through it,’ Bancroft s
aid. ‘Just come downstairs when you have finished. I would love to discuss Tamburlaine with you.’

  Marlowe opened the book and started looking through, backwards, to save time. He had not gone many pages, wading through details of loaves of bread, maids’ wages and pounds of raisins – Bancroft had annotated the raisins in a crabbed hand ‘3d a lb; ruinous’ – before he found the entry he was looking for. ‘Snaphaunce. Bought from the Queen’s Wardrobe.’ It was there, clearly enough, but someone had scored through it neatly with a quill, taking extra care to erase the cost. Now, what could that mean? Marlowe raised his head and looked out down to the river. The boats flickered up and down stream like dragonflies and the shouts of the foreman in the garden came up as a distant hum. The door opened behind him and he turned, to be enveloped in the naked embrace of a woman, who clamped her lips to his as her breasts pressed against his chest. Without looking into his face, she put her cheek to his and whispered in his ear, ‘Oh, Thaddy. Come back to bed. Who was that at the … Oh!’ She pulled away and gave a little scream. ‘You’re not Thaddy!’

  ‘Mistress Bancroft, I presume,’ Marlowe said, dropping his gaze politely, then, realizing it could be misconstrued, up at a bookcase in a distant corner. He didn’t look round until he heard the door slam and running feet go down the landing. He turned his gaze to the window to meet the startled eyes of the plasterer and watched in horror as he lost his grip on the window moulding. It had obviously been in his fate today to see a man fall off a ladder, but at least he knew who had bought the snaphaunce. And also, he suspected, he now knew why Simon Bancroft had thrown himself in the river.

  Marlowe could do with a lie down in his own bed and something half decent to eat. Delicious though it was, he wasn’t sure that Pine Apple on a stomach full of Rhenish was a good idea. But he had to get on and there was also the issue of Shaxsper. He was beginning to dread going home; what with Windlass on one side complaining about Shaxsper and Shaxsper on the other complaining about Windlass he felt like a parent saddled with two squabbling toddlers, but without the cuteness to offset the irritation. So he decided to go to the Rose instead. He had been meaning to speak to the orchestra but simply hadn’t had the time. Today would be as good a day as any and if he knew his musicians they would have various eatables disposed about their persons, for snacking on between scenes.