Queen's Progress Page 5

  Marlowe had not taken the breakfast bread and cheese on offer from Farnham; what with the ill-fare of the last couple of days, his stomach growled. Even the packhorse looked tasty and Marlowe was in need of an inn. The river Wey sparkled below him and, on the crest of a hill, a cluster of thatched cottages promised hospitality. Marlowe mounted again and made for it. The sign of the sun swung overhead and there was the sound of laughter from inside. He passed the reins to a pot boy and ducked under the low lintel.

  After the heat of the ride, the inn was cool and dark and stank of old ale and pipe smoke. In the far corner, a game was in progress – Even and Odd, the rattle of the dice on timber worn smooth by roisterers down the years. Half a dozen men sat there, in their cups, snarling at each other and spitting on the floor as their luck ran.

  Marlowe sat with his back to the wall and ordered ale and cheese. It would be a loud meal but, once taken, he could be on his way.

  ‘Even and Odd, stranger?’ one of the men called to him. ‘Try your chances?’

  Marlowe realized that one of the men was talking to him. He smiled and waved his hand, shaking his head at the same time.

  ‘Why not?’ The man’s initial bonhomie had vanished and he was scowling now.

  ‘I’m never lucky with dice,’ Marlowe explained.

  A larger man turned to face him. ‘Perhaps he thinks our dice are false, Pip,’ he said, tauntingly.

  ‘Is that it, stranger?’ The first man was on his feet now, swaying uncertainly. ‘Flat six-aces, is it? Fullams? Light graviers, maybe?’

  Kit Marlowe had diced away too many of his nights at the Mermaid and the other Hells along the river in London. He knew all the tricks of the trade – the dice with weighted corners, with long and short sides, the dice that always turned up three or four, the cinque-deuces and the barred cater-trays. He smiled again. ‘I’m sure your dice are straight, gentlemen,’ he said, ‘but I’ve just come to break my fast.’ His trencher had arrived and very good it looked too.

  Pip was suddenly at his elbow, the others, their game forgotten in the prospect of greater sport, crowding round Marlowe’s table.

  ‘You’ll find our cheese is the best in the land,’ Pip said, looking down at the plate.

  ‘I’m sure I will,’ Marlowe said.

  ‘But the bread,’ another said, ‘the bread needs a bit of salt.’ And he upended the cellar so that its contents covered Marlowe’s meal. There were guffaws and whoops of delight. Patiently, and with a smile still on his face, Marlowe lifted as much of the salt as he could onto the table and continued this among sneers and insults. Then he sampled the bread. He frowned and shook his head. Then he added more salt. It was Pip’s turn to reach for the cellar but Marlowe was faster. He grabbed the man’s codpiece and squeezed hard, forcing the oaf down to his knees. In the same instant, Marlowe’s right hand flashed clear of the table and his dagger tip was forcing Pip’s head back.

  The laughter and the taunts had stopped. Pip’s eyes bulged and watered as he fought the agonizing pain coursing through his body, like ice-cold lightning. He daren’t move his head and knew that the dagger point had already punctured the skin under his beard.

  ‘Thank your God you’re cup-shotten, pizzle,’ Marlowe growled in his ear, ‘or you’d be dead by now. Landlord!’ he shouted and a wary host reappeared, wiping nervous hands with a greasy apron. ‘I trust this meal is on the house.’

  ‘Oh, yessir,’ the man blurted out, tugging his forelock. ‘Yes, indeed.’

  Marlowe jerked the knife away and, with a final wrench of Pip’s testicles, let him roll to the floor, groaning and sobbing. The projectioner was on his feet. He pushed through the group and crossed to the table with the dice. He weighed the first pair in his hand. ‘High fullam,’ he said. He took the second pair and threw them. ‘Quarters,’ he said. ‘It looks as though I was wrong, gentlemen. Your dice are false indeed. Where I come from, you’d be tied at the cart’s tail for this.’ He tossed the dagger in his hand and slid it home into the sheath at his back.

  The men muttered among themselves, ignoring Pip at their feet, and watched Marlowe cross to the door.

  ‘We don’t know where you’re from, roisterer,’ one of them snarled, ‘but we know where you’re going,’ and they rushed at him, knives glinting in the half-light of the inn.

  Marlowe stepped aside as a blade bit into the timbers of the doorframe. He brought his knee up into its owner’s groin and the man doubled up, falling out of the attack. That still left four of them and it was a long way to the pot boy, still clutching the reins of Marlowe’s horses, with the rapier strapped there. The animals jittered at the noise as men tumbled out of the inn into the sunshine. One of them slashed the sleeve of Marlowe’s doublet, missing the skin by a hair’s breadth. Another tripped him, sending him flying to the dust. He rolled to his knees and felt the sickening crunch as another man’s boot caught him on the side of the head. Dazed and with his vision reeling, he steadied himself to face the renewed attack.

  ‘Here!’ he heard a voice call, and his own sword was sailing through the air towards him. He caught it and parried for his life, hacking a rough’s knife out of his hand. Another swordsman stood over him, his rapier like none that Marlowe had ever seen, making lazy, expert circles in the noonday air.

  The four men checked themselves. There was still no sign of Pip from inside the inn and now they were facing not one chancer, armed with a knife, but two, each with a sword. The newcomer spread his arms wide. ‘Come on, lads,’ he said. ‘You outnumber us two to one. What are you waiting for?’

  The men looked at each other, then licked their lips and sheathed their weapons before shambling back into the darkness beyond the inn door. They leaned against the trestle holding the ale barrels and looked out balefully, like ferrets from their burrow, little eyes glittering with malevolence.

  ‘So,’ the newcomer said. ‘Discretion is the better part of valour. Are you well, sir?’ He pointed to Marlowe’s ripped sleeve.

  ‘It’s nothing a good tailor can’t fix,’ he said. ‘I am grateful to you, Master …?’

  ‘Norfolk.’ The man sheathed his sword. ‘John Norfolk, but my friends call me Jack. You?’

  ‘Christopher Marlowe.’ Marlowe was not as ready to share what his friends called him.

  ‘Well, Christopher Marlowe,’ they shook hands, ‘I’d invite you in for a drink, but I am not too sure we’d be very welcome. I was going to wet my whistle here, but on second thoughts …’

  ‘That sword,’ Marlowe pointed to the many-barred hilt, ‘what is that?’

  ‘This little thing? It’s called a schiavona. The Venetians use them to protect the Doge, I believe.’

  ‘Is that where you bought it?’

  ‘God, no. I won it in a dice game in St Giles. That’s London, by the way.’

  ‘I know it is, Master Norfolk. And I owe you a drink, at the very least. Will you ride with me?’

  ‘Delighted.’ Norfolk crossed to the stable yard to where his bay waited patiently. ‘As long as you promise me, Master Marlowe, that you won’t pick a fight at the next inn we come to.’

  Tom Sledd wouldn’t deny it; despite his many years on the road when he was younger, he was only happy in London. Give him paving beneath his feet, the smell of the river, the cry of vendors in his ears and he was happy. In the country, the silence got him down. He smiled to himself as he sauntered across St James’s and finally entered through the gates of the Palace of Whitehall. He wasn’t as confident here as he was out in the street. This was Westminster, and only the Strand linked it with the city he knew and loved. The sounds of the city fell away as he walked gingerly across ancient flags, worn smooth with the scurrying feet of those who oiled the wheels of state. He stood and waited; he knew that a stranger would not be left alone for long here and so it proved.

  ‘Can I help you?’ The voice seemed forced through dry caverns where the sun had never shone. It fell, cold and unwelcoming, on Tom Sledd’s eardrums and made him spin
around. He hadn’t heard a single sound as the man had approached him and it gave him a prickle of apprehension up his back as he realized that he could have been lying dead at the man’s feet, a stiletto between his ribs, and be none the wiser.

  He cleared his throat to give himself a moment for his heart to stop pumping madly. ‘Yes,’ he said, and pulled himself up a little straighter. Even so, his nose barely reached the other’s breastbone. ‘I am here on official business to see Sir Robert Cecil.’

  The man in black bent at the waist and put his aristocratic nose an inch from Tom Sledd’s snub. ‘No,’ he said simply, then turned and walked away.

  ‘I have a note of hand here from Christopher Marlowe,’ Sledd called, his voice echoing in the vast space.

  The man stopped stalking away and turned slowly, as though worked by gears. ‘You do?’ He retraced his steps and held out his hand. ‘May I?’

  Tom Sledd clutched his purse with both hands. ‘It is for the eyes of Sir Robert only,’ he said, taking a step backwards.

  The man in black raised an eyebrow. ‘In that case, I bid you good day.’ He walked away again and then paused, but did not turn. A sinewy arm, with a pointing finger on the end of it extended from his side. ‘The door is over there.’ And he continued his steady walk.

  ‘It is vitally important,’ the stage manager said, but without much hope of being heard. A door opened in the panelling and the man disappeared behind it. So that was the trick! Somehow, seeing how it worked perked Tom Sledd up a lot and he stood his ground. He wasn’t leaving until he saw Robert Cecil and that was that.

  This time, the footfalls were very easy to spot, as they seemed to belong to a whole phalanx of men in hobnailed boots. Underlying the tramp of buskined feet was the occasional cry as from someone in pain. Tom Sledd recognized it well enough; it was the sound of a company of the Queen’s Guard on the march. This could mean one of several things but only one sprang immediately to mind; the man in black had mustered a company to arrest, incarcerate, torture and eventually kill one Thomas Sledd, of Bankside. He stood transfixed as the tramping got closer and suddenly two enormous doors at the end of the hall were thrown open and the Guard marched in, halberds at the slope, the light flashing on their morions and breastplates. Tom Sledd was in their path and he closed his eyes and waited for the impact.

  Instead of the feeling of nailed boots stamping down on his head and the scream of nerves stretched beyond enduring, there was a silence. Then a shuffling, followed by a voice from just level with the stage manager’s armpit.

  ‘Who are you?’ it said, in the tone of one who was just asking.

  Sledd opened his eyes. In front of him stood a small man, tiny by anyone’s standards and Tom Sledd worked in the theatre, where all things were possible. He knew this was the man he sought, but he was at a loss as to how to go on. ‘Umm … I am Thomas Sledd,’ he said. Start with the simple things and work up seemed to be the best plan. ‘I am here to see … umm … well, you, sir, on business from Christopher Marlowe.’

  Cecil’s right eye twitched a little but otherwise he showed no sign that either name meant a thing to him. ‘Marlowe, you say? I know no one of that name.’

  The captain of the Guard stepped forward. ‘Shall we remove him, sir?’ the man asked.

  Cecil raised a hand and his yard and a half stopped the six-foot guard in his tracks. ‘No,’ he said, ‘no, let him stay. I will talk with him a while. Go and …’ he waved a hand, ‘do some manoeuvres or something useful. Come back later and we will continue.’

  The men marched off, the drill sergeant calling incomprehensible instructions in the rear in a high voice.

  Cecil looked around and then pointed to a bench against a wall. ‘Shall we?’ he said, and they went and sat down side by side. Cecil looked Sledd up and down. ‘So, you are Kit Marlowe’s man, are you? When he said he just needed one man I was expecting someone … bigger. Older.’ His polite upbringing stopped him from adding ‘More intelligent.’

  ‘I am his stage manager, sir,’ Sledd said, by way of explanation. ‘He needs me for arranging the masques and such. I will call on local craftsmen if I need them, when the time comes to build stages and similar. Seamstresses too, for the costumes …’ He noticed Cecil’s eyes begin to glaze and was silent. He knew that not everyone had the same enthusiasms as he did.

  Cecil blinked away his ennui. ‘But you have a message for me, I expect,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Sledd rummaged in his purse and fished out the letter.

  Cecil skimmed it silently. ‘You were there when this happened?’ he asked at length.

  ‘I did not witness it, sir, but I saw the body almost as soon as it was discovered. I examined the battlements from which Sir Walter fell.’

  ‘And in your opinion?’

  Tom Sledd almost burst with pride. He had just been asked his opinion by Sir Robert Cecil! ‘Well … he was dead, sir.’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ Cecil drummed an irritated foot. All of the benches and chairs in the hall had been cut down so that his tiny legs could reach the floor. Everyone else was very uncomfortable, but what did he care? ‘But dead as in murdered? Suicide? Accident?’

  ‘In my opinion …’ Tom Sledd could not help repeating the phrase, ‘… murder, sir.’

  ‘Hmm, yes, that’s what Marlowe thinks too. So – any idea who the murderer might be?’

  This just got better. ‘The old man was a favourite of the servants, sir. Not so much a favourite of his family.’

  Cecil shot him an appraising glance. Perhaps there was a head on those shoulders after all. ‘But further than that, you are not prepared to say?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Perhaps you’re wise, Master Sledd. Now, what to do, that is the question. We could cancel the Queen’s visit, but that may cause alarm … I will think on that. But meanwhile, and with no offence in the world intended, I think I will give Master Marlowe – and your good self, of course – some extra protection. Perhaps a contingent from the Guard?’

  ‘I think that may be a little obvious, sir,’ Sledd ventured to suggest. ‘We are going in to places in the country, quite simple folk. A contingent of the Queen’s Guard might alarm them.’

  ‘You’re very astute, Master Sledd, very astute indeed.’

  ‘I spend a lot of time with Kit … er … Master Marlowe,’ he said, by way of explanation.

  ‘Indeed. Well, I believe I have a solution which will suit us all. When do you leave London and where are you off to next?’

  ‘I was planning to rejoin Master Marlowe in Cowdray in two days’ time.’

  ‘Ah, yes, the Montagues. Then look for my man at Tyburn as you leave. You can’t miss him.’ Cecil slid down off the bench and gave a little chuckle. ‘No, I don’t think you will miss him but, if you are in any doubt, his name is Leonard Lyttleburye. But really, you will find him with no trouble.’ Chuckling, Cecil made for the door. As he opened it, the sound of marching feet came through in a wave, shut off again as the door swung to. Tom Sledd followed him after a polite interval, swaggering a little. That had gone well. Very well indeed. Now all he needed was to avoid meeting Leonard Lyttleburye and it would be perfect. Whistling through his teeth, he made his way through the thronged May streets to the river and the theatre. He’d tell his Meg and his baby all about it, but most of all he would tell them all at the Rose – the son of the Lord Chancellor of England had just asked him for his opinion.

  The Blue Boar at Haslemere was altogether more welcoming than the Sun at the Punchbowl. There were no drunken oafs here, just a handful of merchants earnestly discussing the cost of a bushel of wheat, shaking their heads and wondering what the world was coming to. Marlowe and Norfolk sprawled on the benches in the little garden at the back of the building while a pot boy watered their grateful horses.

  ‘I’m afraid I haven’t been entirely honest with you, Master Marlowe.’

  ‘Oh?’ Marlowe was a projectioner of standing. For nearly seven years now, the length of a
young man’s apprenticeship, he had served Her Majesty. Suspicion was his middle name. Real people’s lives were as dark and twisted as the characters he created for the stage, where all was smoke and mirrors. Tamburlaine the lame, Barabas the Jew, Faustus who worshipped the Devil, they all had their counterparts in life. What, Marlowe wondered, lay behind the mask of Norfolk’s carefree banter, his easy smile?

  ‘You see this?’ Norfolk held out the cloth of his braided doublet. ‘My horse? My sword?’

  Marlowe nodded.

  ‘All I have in the world.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Marlowe said. Money came easily to few men. While Sir Francis Walsingham had been his paymaster, the projectioner was comfortable. But Walsingham was dead, and everyone knew that he had died in penury because of the tight-fistedness of the Queen. Robert Cecil was no Francis Walsingham and Marlowe could not be sure of his next groat. As for the theatres … whoever knew a rich playwright?

  ‘I am, as they say, a masterless man. I was wondering … well, to be blunt – can you give me a job?’

  Marlowe laughed, sipping his ale. ‘I told you, Master Norfolk, I am on the Queen’s business for the Master of the Revels. But I am impressed that you ask for a job, not just a hand-out.’

  ‘Neither a borrower nor a lender be, or so my old grandfather used to tell me. And he died in prison for debt, so he should know. But as far as your work for the Master of the Revels goes, you seem to be carrying out that difficult task all alone,’ Norfolk observed. ‘Surely, you need help? An amanuensis?’

  ‘I have one,’ Marlowe told him, ‘who is away on business at the moment.’ He saw that Norfolk looked a little crestfallen. ‘What can you do?’

  ‘I lose money at Odds and Evens. And lansquenet and primero and any other card game you care to name.’