Queen's Progress Read online

  Montague himself cantered into the lists. ‘Do you challenge me, sir?’ he asked.

  ‘Not you, old man,’ the knight answered through the thickness of leather, mail and iron. ‘That arrogant whelp of yours.’

  Martin Browne had not dismounted yet and he trotted over, staring at the stranger in his obsolete armour. ‘Do you mean me, sir?’ he asked.

  ‘Who are you, sir?’ Hawtrey wanted to know. ‘For the lists.’

  ‘You’ll know me soon enough,’ the knight said and clawed a silver talisman from his belt. It was a wolf-dog, chained and with lolling tongue. ‘In this sign, conquer,’ he said.

  ‘I’ll take him, Father,’ Martin said, ‘and then he’ll be only too glad to tell us his name.’

  ‘I don’t think …’ Montague was saying, but his son was in no mood to back down. He rode closer and smashed the knight’s plain shield with his gauntlet, accepting the challenge. Both men wheeled to their respective ends of the lists.

  ‘Hawtrey,’ Montague was frowning, uneasy about this turn of events. ‘What’s all this about? Did you know about this?’

  ‘No, my lord, the knight is a stranger. I suppose there’s no harm in it.’

  ‘No harm?’ Montague snapped. ‘Look, the man has a sharpened lance.’

  But there was no time to stop it now. Without a trumpet call or a lowered hand, both men were thundering towards each other, Browne the more heavily armed, his lance locked and level. The newcomer’s grey was lighter and faster and he braced his back for the impact. Montague and Hawtrey could not look away from the deadly tip of the challenger’s lance. Neither could Marlowe. With the Massacre at Paris still forming in his mind for Henslowe’s Rose, he knew all too well that the chaos in France had been caused by the King of that benighted land going down in the lists in a ‘friendly’ bout, a lance tip where his brain used to be.

  The clash of steel and the splinter of wood were eclipsed by the scream that rang from inside Martin Browne’s helmet. The heir to Cowdray was catapulted from the saddle and bounced several times in the dust. He tried to rise, but collapsed as Montague and Hawtrey galloped to him, jumping from their saddles and cradling the stricken boy.

  The strange knight, his unbroken lance red with blood, had already hooked its tip around the blue colours from his opponent’s lance and trotted over to the pavilion, silent now. A hundred faces looked at him, horror-stricken as he pointed his lance towards Lady Montague. ‘Your colours, my lady,’ he said. ‘Next time, give them to a worthier opponent.’

  As if in a dream, her tears bubbling, her heart thumping, Lady Montague took the scarf and the stranger knight wheeled away, riding past young Georgie, who, with his new-found courage, considered trying to stop him. It was Marlowe’s hand on his arm that checked him. ‘Not this one, boy,’ he said softly, watching the man go, his grey breaking into a canter as he left the lists. ‘Not this time.’

  ‘Kit!’ A voice broke the new silence. ‘Kit Marlowe!’

  Two men were trotting up from the periphery of the arena. Tom Sledd was grinning from ear to ear and there seemed to be a giant riding with him. ‘Bugger!’ Tom said. ‘A tournament! It’s been years since I saw a good tournament. And I’ve missed it.’

  Marlowe looked at the men clustering around Martin Browne, his body convulsing in the settling dust as they tried to loosen his armour without hurting him even more. ‘A good tournament, Tom?’ he murmured. ‘There’s no such thing.’

  It occurred to Marlowe that virtually since he had first met her, Lady Montague’s eyes had been filled with tears – overwhelmed by the honour of her Queen’s imminent arrival; proud with the martial achievements of her younger boy; and now, fretting over the physical condition of her eldest. For that, at least, there was some reason. Martin Browne lay propped on his pillows, servants coming and going at the behest of the man’s parents and the doctor, a cadaverous old boy who looked to be nearer the grave than any of them.

  ‘Can you explain it, Marlowe?’ Anthony Montague was pacing the floor of the solar, exactly as he had twenty years ago when little Martin came screaming and wriggling into the world. He wasn’t screaming or wriggling today. His eyes were glazed, his skin pale, except the angry purple swelling around the wound in his chest where the lance tip had rammed home. ‘Who was that knight? Hawtrey here knew nothing about him. He just came out of nowhere.’

  ‘Forgive me for saying this, my lord.’ Marlowe had not touched his claret. ‘But a man like yourself must have enemies.’

  ‘Of course I have,’ Montague frowned. ‘That goes with the territory. Masterless blackguards who envy my wealth. Established lords who see the Brownes as Johannes-come-latelys. Bible-thumping Puritans who don’t like the way I celebrate Mass. But he didn’t take me on, did he? He specifically challenged Martin.’

  ‘So,’ Marlowe reasoned, ‘a man like Martin must also have enemies. Heir to Cowdray, as nouveau riche as you, my lord. And, I assume, of the same religious persuasion.’

  Montague was unwilling to see the mote in his son’s eye. ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘And women …’ Marlowe suggested.

  ‘Certainly not!’ Montague erupted. ‘I know what they say, but …’

  ‘There was the Lady Angela, my lord.’ Hawtrey had not been offered any claret. He was a steward; he knew his place.

  ‘Lady Angela?’ Marlowe echoed.

  Montague grunted and swigged from his goblet. ‘Old Beaumont’s youngest. Slip of a thing who took a shine to my boy. Rumour has it in the area that Martin had his way with her and left her with child.’

  Marlowe waited for more and when none was forthcoming, asked, ‘And did he?’

  ‘Could have been anybody,’ the Lord of Cowdray grunted. ‘The Beaumont girls rut for England, all four of them. Must be something in the water. Beaumont was perfectly good about it – he knows his own children. Anyway, that was two years ago. If this stranger knight was some sort of avenger, he took his time about it.’ He walked over to the mantelpiece and slammed the goblet down on a projecting piece of heraldry, carved out of local stone. ‘One thing’s certain. The pointed lance – the bastard was trying to kill him.’

  Marlowe shook his head. ‘I don’t think so, my lord,’ he said. ‘There was something about the man … I don’t know … I can’t explain it. But I think if he’d intended to kill your son, the boy would be dead now.’

  Montague looked at him, with a hint of a tear in his eye. ‘It may only be a matter of time,’ he said. ‘If only I’d ridden after the bastard, stopped him, ripped off his helmet …’

  ‘My lord.’ Hawtrey was ever the loyal servant. ‘Don’t reproach yourself. I should have done that.’

  ‘Well,’ Montague sighed, slapping the man’s shoulder as he passed him, ‘there it is. What can’t be cured must be endured and other pointless aphorisms. Marlowe – how far along are your plans for the Queen?’

  ‘The Queen will not be coming, my lord,’ Marlowe told him.

  Montague and Hawtrey looked up. ‘What?’ Montague growled. ‘What the Devil do you mean? Mrs B. will go demented.’

  ‘Her Majesty would not wish to impose, my lord,’ he said, ‘with Master Martin’s life hanging in the balance. I shall recommend otherwise.’

  ‘Otherwise be buggered,’ Montague snapped. ‘We’ll be ready. This …’ he waved vaguely to the air, ‘this is nothing.’

  Marlowe bowed and took his leave.

  ‘Damnedest thing I ever saw.’ Jack Norfolk stretched himself and quaffed his ale. ‘Came out of the mist and challenged Montague in front of everybody.’

  ‘But who was he?’ Tom Sledd wanted to know. Ever since he and Leonard Lyttleburye had met Jack Norfolk, it was almost the only question he had asked. And he still had no answer that made any sense.

  ‘Could be a ghost,’ Lyttleburye muttered. The others looked at him.

  ‘Come again?’ Sledd blinked. He had ridden all the way from Tyburn with this man. The giant said little and what he did say was largely incomp
rehensible, usually relating to the last topic of conversation but one.

  ‘Well, I’m just saying,’ Lyttleburye expanded. ‘He comes out of nowhere. He vanishes just as fast. That’s a ghost, that is.’

  ‘Know a lot about ghosts, do you, Leonard?’ Norfolk asked.

  The giant loomed forward out of his chair, wiping the ale-froth from his moustache, ‘There are more things in Heaven and earth, Master Norfolk, than you and me have had hot dinners.’

  ‘Very deep,’ Sledd nodded. ‘But not very helpful. Why the old armour, Jack?’

  ‘Hmm?’

  ‘You said this knight was wearing an obsolete harness. Leonard and I didn’t actually see him.’

  ‘Looked old to me,’ Norfolk nodded. ‘Before my time, certainly.’

  The door swung wide and Kit Marlowe swept in, sealed letters in his hand. ‘Gentlemen,’ he nodded to them, ‘Tom – a word.’

  The playwright and his stage manager walked out along the landing and lodged themselves in the window seat, heads together, silhouetted against the last purple bars of the sunset sky to the west. ‘I haven’t exactly had a chance to talk to you. Tell me about Lyttleburye.’

  ‘Vegetable,’ Sledd said. ‘Think of the simplest of the groundlings. Then think of any of the things they throw. The dumbest one of those is Leonard. But for some reason, Sir Robert rates him. Wouldn’t take no for an answer. I’ll wager he’ll be useful enough in a tavern punch-up, though.’

  ‘Which is where Jack Norfolk came in.’

  ‘Aha,’ Sledd nodded. ‘I was going to ask you about him. This is a sort of … you show me your man; I’ll show you mine, is it?’

  ‘Something like that,’ Marlowe chuckled. ‘Tell me, could you bear Norfolk’s company for a few days?’

  ‘If the choice is him or the genius of Tyburn, the answer is yes. God, yes, a thousand times.’

  ‘All right,’ Marlowe said, ‘but don’t thank me yet. I want you both to go to Petworth.’

  ‘Isn’t that …?’

  ‘The home of the wizard earl, yes.’

  ‘It’ll be creepy to meet him again. What does the Queen want there?’

  ‘Fireworks, apparently; squibs. His Lordship’s particularly adept with the Devil’s inventions if memory serves. Hold the fort there until I arrive. I’m sending Norfolk with you in case of any trouble. Trust me, he can handle himself.’

  ‘Where will you be?’

  ‘Staying here for a day or two. Seeing how Martin Browne’s coming along.’

  ‘And lugubrious Leonard?’ Sledd asked.

  ‘He’s Cecil’s man. He can go and see him, with this letter. What he does after that, no doubt the Spymaster will tell us.’

  In his right hand, Sir Robert Cecil held a miniature portrait of Walter Raleigh. The great Lucifer twinkled at him from the painted oval, all ruff and swagger, feathers and pearls. In his left hand, Cecil held a similar portrait of Robert Devereux, the Earl of Essex, before he’d decided to disguise his ugly chin with a beard. The man was smiling slightly, pleased with himself and with the ridiculous embroidered coat he wore over his armour.

  ‘Arseholes!’ Cecil muttered and slammed both miniatures face down. It was cool in the oak-panelled office under the eaves at Whitehall, and above the rooftops he could see the stonework of the palace of the Archbishop of Canterbury at Lambeth. Around the curve of the river, the tall ships of the Queen’s wharves rode at anchor, taking the woollens of the World and bringing back riches without end. Such was the economic theory of the country he was pledged to protect. Yet Robert Cecil was still merely a knight, for all he was old Burghley’s son and the number of Privy Council meetings he had attended could still be counted on the fingers of one hand. He had yet to prove himself. And the Progress was the way to do it.

  There was a sharp rap on the door and a guard stepped in, all scarlet and gold in the Queen’s livery. ‘Master Lyttleburye to see you, sir.’

  ‘Send him in.’ The Queen’s imp sat back in his high chair and waited.

  ‘Your servant, sir.’ The giant marched in, his tread making the glassware tremble. He bowed low.

  ‘You are indeed, Lyttleburye,’ Cecil acknowledged. ‘What news?’

  The giant handed the Spymaster Marlowe’s letter and he read it quickly. He looked under his eyebrows at the messenger, ‘Did Marlowe confide these contents to you?’ he asked.

  ‘No, sir, merely that I was to reach you post-haste.’

  ‘Hmm.’ Cecil pointed to a chair and Lyttleburye sat on it, gingerly as was his habit, grateful to have his arse in something other than a saddle. The Spymaster’s large eyes narrowed and he tapped the parchment. ‘This strange knight,’ he said. ‘Tell me about him.’

  ‘I didn’t see him, sir. Sledd and I arrived moments after the bout. I’m not sure he was real.’

  Cecil blinked at the man. ‘Not real?’ he said. ‘How so?’

  ‘Well, nobody knows who he was. Where he came from. Or where he went. Creepy, if you ask me. Er … and you did ask me, sir.’

  ‘Yes,’ Cecil sighed; that was probably his first mistake.

  ‘Is there a message for Master Marlowe, sir?’ Lyttleburye wanted to know.

  ‘There is indeed. It tells me here he intends to wait a little while at Cowdray, then on to Petworth. Join him there. So far, so good.’ And he smiled at Lyttleburye, who knew perfectly that a smile from Robert Cecil was like the silver plate on a coffin.

  SEVEN

  All day, Kit Marlowe had been uneasy. He had left the packhorse with Tom Sledd so all he carried today was his sword and a water bottle. The sun was bright by the time he reached Marley Common, the sheep grazing on the springy grass. Behind him, the high ground of Black Down lay bathed in sunlight. Twice he had halted in the forests of dappled oak and Scots pine, listening, watching. He could swear that there was someone behind him, but each time he turned, easing his legs, he could see no one. The very birds in the trees seemed complicit with his follower, if he actually had one. Every time he thought he heard a twig snap or a breath sigh, a blackbird would go into a frenzy of song, trilling up and down the scale, telling the world of the joy of early summer, unravelling pure music from its quivering throat. And when the blackbird stopped to think up his next stanza, a trio of wrens would start wrangling it out above his head. He had had quieter rides in the middle of Town.

  A play was forging itself in his brain, hammering a refrain over the open fields of the south country as they once did in the choking, blood-cobbled streets of Paris. They were just words at the moment, tumbling out of the blue, echoing and re-echoing through his mind – ‘But he that sits and rules above the clouds doth hear and see the prayers of the just and will revenge the blood of innocents’; yes, he’d better put that in somewhere – Henslowe’s backers would expect it and it might soften the Puritan hysteria at another Devil-gotten play from that atheist Kit Marlowe. He looked up at the sky – ‘If ever day were turned to ugly night and night made semblance of the hue of Hell …’ The play was about murder, because murder had been done in Paris in the year of the Lord 1572 and there was no escaping that. Assassination. It was a soft word, spoken in sibilance, wafted in whispers. It was why he was on the road today – to stop it from happening to the Queen. In his play, in the twisted politics of the French court, how could it be done? A musket? Messy. Loud. Dangerous, as he knew all too well. Poison? That was silent; that was deadly and on stage, the administering of it caused no problems at all. He could just imagine Ned Alleyn wringing every ounce of drama – the uncorking of the bottle, the drip, drip, drip of something noxious into an innocent drink; oh, yes, plenty of scope there.

  ‘A groat for your thoughts,’ he suddenly heard the words and reined in sharply. ‘I doubt they’re worth more than that.’

  Ahead of him, a man sat on a bay horse pointing a wheel-lock at him.

  ‘A pistol,’ Marlowe said, his hands half-raised. ‘I hadn’t considered that.’

  The wheel-lock’s hammer clicked back and the gun
slid into its saddle-holster. ‘How’ve you been, Kit?’

  Marlowe let his hands fall to the pommel again. ‘Nicholas Faunt,’ he said. ‘The last I heard, you were dead.’

  ‘That’s the last I heard, too,’ Faunt said, laughing. He slid out of the saddle and led his horse to a stand of trees by the roadside. ‘Cider?’ He was unbuckling a goatskin.

  Marlowe dismounted too. ‘You were following me,’ he said, hitching his chestnut alongside Faunt’s gelding.

  ‘Was I? Going in the same direction, let’s call it. Following is so … well, it makes me sound like a spy of some kind.’ Faunt held out a gloved hand. ‘It’s good to see you, Kit.’

  ‘And you, Nicholas.’ Marlowe shook the man’s hand and they sat together under the elms.

  ‘On your travels, I gather.’ Faunt produced bread and cheese to accompany the cider.

  Marlowe looked at him. Nicholas Faunt had been Francis Walsingham’s secretary, his right hand, a projectioner par excellence; no one sharper, no one faster, no one more deadly. ‘Really? And from whom did you gather that?’

  ‘Tom Sledd,’ Faunt munched the loaf.

  ‘I’ll kill him,’ Marlowe said simply, shaking his head.

  ‘Ah, he means well enough, Kit; you know that. It’s just that, in our business …’

  ‘Are you still in “our business”, Nicholas? I seem to remember that you and Sir Robert parted as a little less than the best of friends.’

  ‘Oh, yes, the little monstrosity is “Sir” now, isn’t he? Well, it was inevitable, I suppose, his papa owning half England and having both ears of the Queen.’

  Marlowe laughed. ‘Shame on you, Nicholas Faunt,’ he said. ‘You’re bitter.’

  ‘Me?’ Faunt widened his eyes and passed the bread to Marlowe. ‘Heaven forfend. Odd business at Farnham, I understand.’

  Marlowe frowned. ‘Is there nothing Tom left out?’ he asked.