Secret World Read online

  He hurtled into his children’s room. ‘There, there, Phoebe,’ he comforted the screaming girl. ‘Papa’s here.’ He swept the hysterical child up and bent to lift the babies too. The flames had not reached this room yet, but the smoke had and all of them were coughing and crying as their papa carried them out. On the stairs, the maidservants cowered terrified. They had hauled on their shifts or still stood in their nightshirts and they took the children from the master, scurrying down the stairs with them. He could hear Phoebe’s cries of ‘Beelbub!’ fade as they reached the safety of the street. Beelbub indeed and woe betide him, demon or no demon, when Charlie Angleton got his hands on him.

  Alan had reached the stairtop with another bucket and he threw it at the flames that roared and leapt now, crawling along the ceiling timbers and making the pitch spit and crack. The attack on his strongroom forgotten, Angleton took charge. ‘Anyone who is not holding a child or a woman!’ he shouted, ‘fetch more water. I want a chain of people up these stairs now. And just remember – Mistress Angleton is due back tomorrow. We’ve got to sort all this before then!’

  And he dodged aside as the roof timbers began to fall.

  Marlowe took a boat below the Bridge and the ferryman rowed east, following the river’s curves.

  ‘Something’s going up tonight, sir,’ the man grunted as he bent his back to his oars. Marlowe turned. Beyond the guttering flame on the stern of the boat, there was a glow beyond the Bridge that threw the ramshackle buildings into stark silhouette. There were always fires in the city and in a summer like this it wouldn’t be surprising if the whole lot went up. Marlowe turned back, facing the way the boat was going. To his right, the stews of Southwark lay dark and menacing, the Winchester geese going about their illicit business in the shadows.

  ‘Captain Winter?’ Marlowe popped his head around the cabin door.

  ‘At your service, sir.’ The man with the silver whistle around his neck sat at a table near the window.

  ‘Formerly master of the Elizabeth?’ It didn’t hurt to double check.

  ‘The Elizabeth?’ The man belched. ‘That was a long time ago. She’s full fathom five now, I fear. Drinkie?’

  He waved a crystal decanter and topped his cup up from it.

  ‘It is a little early for me, Captain,’ Marlowe said.

  ‘Nonsense,’ the man slurred. ‘Sun’s over the yardarm. And he filled a second cup, ushering Marlowe to a chair. The bravely named Wanderer was wandering no more. Her sails had gone and her masts were sawn off at man’s height above her decks. But this little barque had been John Winter’s home for nearly five years, tucked away in a brackish backwater of the King’s Yard at Deptford.

  ‘Now, sir,’ Winter said as he clinked his goblet with Marlowe’s and sat back. ‘Your business? As you can see, I’m a busy man.’ On the table between them lay a new book, open at a page showing the world as it stood.

  ‘Hakluyt?’ Marlowe tapped the page.

  Winter slammed the book shut. ‘That depends who’s asking,’ he said, frowning at his visitor.

  ‘Forgive me, captain,’ Marlowe said, smiling at the man. ‘My name is Kit Marlowe. Doctor Dee sent me.’

  ‘John Dee?’ The man’s red-rimmed eyes lit up. ‘Good God, I thought he was dead.’

  ‘Many people do.’ Marlowe nodded. ‘But he is well and sends you his remembrance.’

  ‘Well, well …’ Winter was remembering with fondness some secret scene from his past, now half lost to time. ‘But you didn’t come all the way to Deptford to bring me John Dee’s best wishes.’

  ‘Indeed not,’ Marlowe said. ‘I wanted to know about Drake.’

  ‘A bastard, that man, pure and simple.’

  ‘But you served under him.’

  Winter guffawed and quaffed his wine. ‘As some men serve the Devil or so I’m told. Let’s just say it was not a happy experience.’

  ‘We’re talking about the circumnavigation?’ Marlowe checked they were on the same voyage down the years.

  Winter nodded. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘The truth.’

  ‘About Doughty?’

  ‘About what you found.’

  Winter took another swig and gritted his teeth as though every mouthful hurt him. He sighed and tapped Hakluyt’s book. ‘The Principal Navigations my arse!’ he spat. ‘Have you read this?’

  ‘I’ve dipped,’ Marlowe lied.

  ‘Well, I nearly vomited just reading his crawling epistle dedicatory, I can tell you. And to Francis Walsingham of all people. You know the Queen calls him her Moor, don’t you?’

  Marlowe knew. ‘Really?’ he said, wide-eyed.

  ‘Walsingham invested in the circumnavigation,’ Winter remembered. ‘Appreciably less of course than any other investor. But all that –’ the captain pointed to Hakluyt’s book – ‘rubbish. Pure invention.’

  ‘But you were there,’ Marlowe reminded the man. ‘With Drake, I mean. You can tell me what you really found.’

  Winter stood up, hauling his doublet down and smoothing back his greying hair. He crossed to the thick leaded panes that looked out over the shipyards and the grey, shifting river. Then he turned to Marlowe. ‘How old are you, boy?’ he asked.

  ‘Twenty-five summers, sir,’ the projectioner told him.

  ‘Hmm,’ Winter grunted. ‘Your eyes look older, but you haven’t even finished shitting yellow yet. All right; pin your ears back and prepare yourself to be amazed.’

  He sat down again, his finger tracing imaginary coasts and inlets, bays and capes as he spoke. ‘I have seen mermaids, Marlowe, beautiful women with the tail of a fish.’

  ‘A fish?’

  ‘Yes. Drives a sailor mad, you see, because you can’t lie with them. No legs to open. I don’t need to draw you a map.’

  ‘Indeed not.’

  ‘They climb into the trees at night and fight with the baboons and apes. Their cries …’ He shook his head and swigged again, wiping wine and spittle from his beard. ‘God, their cries. Terrifying. And that’s not all.’

  ‘It isn’t?’

  ‘The parrots there play chess.’ He chuckled at a sudden memory. ‘And they’re not half bad at it either.’

  ‘I’m sure not.’ Marlowe was beginning to think that Dee had sent him to the wrong place. Bedlam lay in the other direction.

  ‘I have seen women in those parts lay eggs as a chicken does and their babies are huge. The Scipodes have only one foot. Now, I know what you’re thinking …’

  ‘I doubt you do, Captain,’ Marlowe said quietly. ‘I wanted to know about the stones.’

  ‘Stones?’

  ‘Jewels,’ Marlowe said. ‘Set in a silver sea.’

  ‘Zanzibar.’ Winter nodded, topping up his cup again. Marlowe held a hand over his. ‘Emeralds, diamonds, rubies, sapphires. We filled two ships with gold, unicorns’ horns and musk. And two adamant stones. Magnets, you see, that draw iron to them.’

  Marlowe pulled Jane Benchkyne’s globe from his purse and let it clatter on to the table in front of the Wanderer’s erstwhile captain.

  ‘What’s this?’ Winter asked.

  ‘I believe it is a map,’ Marlowe said. ‘Of Drake’s voyage, to be exact.’

  ‘Drake’s voyage!’ Winter spat contemptuously. The light of remembrance seemed to have gone and he looked tired, old, withdrawn. ‘The Elizabeth was holed below the waterline,’ he said. ‘I had to put in for repairs. The Benedict did too.’

  ‘The Benedict?’

  ‘Harry Bellot’s ship. Well, Tom Nowell’s really, but Bellot was the pilot. Nowell didn’t know his orlop from his rigol in my opinion. The Benedict was in such bad shape she had to be scrapped. By the time my carpenters had solved the Elizabeth’s problem, Drake was long gone. I came home with Bellot and the Benedict’s people.’

  ‘This line –’ Marlowe pointed to it, making Winter focus his rebellious pupils – ‘what does it show?’

  The captain peered closer. The light was not good and the drink didn’t help.
He nodded. ‘Drake’s route.’ He turned the disc over. ‘About here is where we parted company. The island of Antigua. Godforsaken place.’

  ‘And the jewel?’ Marlowe turned the disc back over. ‘What does it signify?’

  ‘They were just stories, Marlowe,’ Winter said. He seemed suddenly sober. ‘You can’t believe a word of them.’

  ‘Let me be the judge of that, captain,’ the projectioner said.

  ‘Very well.’ Winter reached for his jug again but Marlowe touched his arm and he stopped. ‘When they all got back, heroes they were. The Queen, God bless her, knighted Drake on the Pelican’s deck … just over there.’ He waved his hand to his left. ‘It didn’t seem right. Or fair. Drake’s was the only ship to come back. Harry Bellot was very bitter about it. When they all got back, there were stories, oh, whispered, of course, by men in their cups …’

  Marlowe raised an eyebrow but the subtlety was lost on Winter.

  The captain cleared his throat. ‘If only half of it was to be true, no one would believe it. There were tales of treasure, of course, because what sailor would want to limp home from such a voyage without tales of treasure? But when it comes to stories of men wearing clothes made of gold and women eating sapphires to make their babies beautiful, well … some things just cannot be. The story goes that Drake burned down the houses where the Indians lived among such splendours and the gold ran in rivers and solidified to estuary banks more precious than any treasury in the world. But why do that? The Pelican could have brought at least some of it back. I know Drake well enough to know that he would rather load the decks with gems and leave his sailors behind to rot than leave so much as a groat’s worth behind. Few enough came back as it was. Nowell’s dead, that I do know. But Harry Bellot is still with us. I see him, sometimes, out and about. He comes from the east coast somewhere –’ Winter waved a vague hand – ‘but I believe he lives in Southwark these days. Leastways, that’s where I bump into him, when I do. Which isn’t often. I don’t leave the old Wanderer more than I need to.’ He shook the bottle hopefully and poured the last dregs into his cup. ‘No. Nothing out there on dry land to interest me.’

  Marlowe was beginning to feel that he had had enough of old sailors’ tales for a lifetime. It was time to get this conversation back to the subject. ‘So, was there any treasure on the Pelican?’

  Winter thought for a while, trying to remember what they had been talking about. ‘There was some, enough to please his investors. But all the riches of the whole world? No, even Drake, who has the luck of the Devil himself, even he did not find that.’

  ‘So, this globe,’ Marlowe said as he held the jewel out for Winter’s perusal again, ‘does not show where Drake hid his treasure?’

  Winter spluttered a laugh. ‘Life is not just about treasure, Master Marlowe, whatever men may say. I am happier here on my Wanderer than any man with a king’s ransom in his treasure house. I have seen things, Master Marlowe, things to make your hair curl –’ he glanced up – ‘more.’

  Marlowe could recognize when a tale was coming round again and stood up, pocketing the globes.

  ‘Wait,’ Winter called after him as he made for the stairs up to the deck and fresh air. ‘Wait. I haven’t told you about the Fanesii yet. I played at tables with them, you know. Their ears are long as cloaks covering their shoulders and arms. And the Apothani …’

  But Kit Marlowe wasn’t listening any more. He had places to be.

  FOURTEEN

  The summer was proving to be the hottest and longest that any man alive could remember. Katherine Marley lay back in the long, dry grass and fanned her face with her hand. Evening was coming but she just couldn’t get cool and was relishing the privacy of the whispering blades so she could unloose her bodice just a little. It was a lifetime since she had run barefoot along the sands at the edge of the sea at Dover, skipping and squealing with her brothers and sisters, hopping over the froth of the white horses as they hit the beach at a gallop. It had been so long since she had felt the sharp sting of salty air on her bare skin and she wept for the loss of her life, shackled to a bully. For her children, both the dead and the living, dead to her in other ways. A tear trickled down from her closed eyes and ran warm into her ear and down her neck. She sniffed and made to dash it away, but Wim Grijs grabbed her wrist and instead, licked and kissed the tear away. The grass rustled as he turned over and put an arm across her waist.

  ‘Don’t cry, Kat,’ he said. ‘I didn’t ask you to meet me so I could see you cry.’

  ‘I know,’ she whispered. ‘But I don’t know what you thought could be achieved by this. I have had years to get over you, Wim, and haven’t been able to do it. And while you still visit, send notes, meet me here, there, wherever is private, I never will. Every time Kit looks at me with your eyes, my heart turns over. John Marley will see the likeness one day and then where will we be?’

  Grijs smiled and tickled her under the nose with a blade of grass and made her sneeze. ‘Don’t be sad, Kat,’ he said. ‘We’ve had what we can, haven’t we? And although I would like some more one day, that isn’t why I asked you to come here today.’

  She turned her head, setting her cap askew. ‘Then, why?’

  ‘I need to know – can I trust Kit?’

  ‘With what?’ Her heart gave a lurch.

  Grijs drew a deep breath and seemed to hold it for ever before letting it go. ‘He knows something which could harm the two of us, if it gets out. The problem I have is that he doesn’t know it involves you – if he knew, then I know he would keep the secret to the grave. But … this is so hard, Kat.’

  ‘Tell me,’ she said, through lips as dry and stiff as bone.

  ‘When you left me, to marry John Marley, I went to sea. I … made a lot of money.’

  She sat up and just as suddenly lay down again. The grass was long but only concealed her when lying flat. ‘You were a … pirate?’ Her eyes were wide.

  ‘It isn’t how it sounds,’ he said. ‘The polite term is privateer. I sailed with many men who are famous now, who have left the taint of piracy behind. I won’t go into it, I am not proud of it but that was then and I was angry. Angry at you, at Marley, at the world. Anyway, the fit passed but it left me with money in my pocket and a knowledge of the world so, when Drake was looking for investors in his voyage to circumnavigate the globe, I put some money in. It paid back, not handsomely but well enough, and as well as my dividend, I received a jewel from Sir Francis, with the instruction that I keep it safe, to look after it as I would my life.’

  The woman beside him looked at the sky, not speaking, but a small muscle worked at the side of her jaw.

  ‘Mistress Benchkyne, who you know went strange in the head in the last few years, saw it one day in my house and for some reason, had to have it. It seemed to exert some strange power over her, I don’t know what. I wondered if that was why it was sent to me to keep safe; that it carried some spell or another, although in normal times I would not believe such things. She started selling off her things, coming to my house with bags of silver and gold, offering me all she had if she could own the jewel, but I always refused.’

  ‘But you let her have it in the end?’

  He reached out and stroked her cheek. ‘Yes. Yes, I did.’

  ‘Why? If you had been told to guard it? How did you know that it was not her you had to guard it against?’ Katherine Marley had a simple view of life.

  ‘I let her have it because she said if I didn’t, she would tell John Marley about us.’

  Even the grasshoppers and skylarks fell silent as the woman took it in. She even thought she knew when Mistress Benchkyne had gained her knowledge. There had been a day, a day when she knew her husband to be away from home until the next morning, when Wim Grijs had come to the house, letting himself in at the back door and creeping up the stairs. Looking out into the back garden as he crept away with the dawn, she had thought she saw a figure over the hedge but had dismissed it as a trick of the light. But that was cl
early not so.

  Grijs was continuing his tale. ‘She came round and offered me one last chance. She must have the globe or she would tell the whole town. She was so far gone in her madness by then that she said she would run through the streets, crying the news. Kat, I believed her. So … I let her have the globe.’

  ‘What happened to her money? Folk say there was hardly a stick of furniture in the house when she was found.’

  ‘She paid me.’ He sounded disbelieving even as he spoke. ‘She wouldn’t have the globe for nothing. The threat of telling the town was just like the last payment, the one that makes the seller part with his goods. She was mad. But I had to protect you, Kat. And now, I hear, your Kit is going round looking for the other globes. I was a fool to think mine the only one. So in time, if he hasn’t already, he will know that the one he has tucked in his doublet was once mine. And if he chooses to dig, he will find the body where we have kept it buried all this time.’

  Talk of bodies made ice trickle down Kat Marley’s spine. ‘It wasn’t you who killed her, was it, Wim?’ Even as she asked, she knew she didn’t want to know the answer and she covered her ears with her hands, pressing the palms tight to the side of her head.

  She could feel his breath hot on her face as he leaned in to make sure she heard. ‘No, Kat. No, I didn’t kill her. I wanted to; but someone got there first.’

  The bats flitted in and out of the yews that guarded Walsingham’s gates at Barn Elms. The night was a deep purple and as warm as day. Katherine Marley was not the only one feeling the heat. Women had gone into labour early. Grown men had collapsed crying in the fields, exhausted by the harvest. Children were tetchy and fretful. Babies would not shut up. And if lions didn’t exactly whelp in the streets, well, it was only a matter of time …

  Marlowe saw how low the water lay in the Spymaster’s ponds. His carp would be flapping overland soon, looking for deeper water. But it wasn’t the fish that held Marlowe’s attention as he left the ferryman by the weir.

  ‘Ho, Master Faunt!’ he called.