A Prisoner in Malta (9 page)

The man shook his head, even smiled a little. “Well, we're both a long way from home, and that's the truth.”

Marlowe leaned closer to the knight. “Look, my employer—I mean to say, that's his old dad in prison. And they love their dads, these Jews do. But then, don't we all?”

The knight leaned in further and whispered, “Truth be told, I have no idea who mine was.”

“That being the case,” Marlowe said, patting the knight on the arm, “you and I could very well be brothers. I never saw much of my sire, but they say he raked it in all over the county. And you and me being from the same region—I mean, imagine if he knew your mum!”

The other man stared for a second, and looked as if he might draw his weapon. Then he burst into laughter.

“God,” he said to Marlowe, “it's good to hear a familiar-sounding voice.”

“Amen to that.”

“I suppose you ought to go on in then,” he said to Marlowe. He turned to the others and barked, “Let these two pass!”

The huge door opened, and Lopez stepped in, followed immediately by Marlowe. Before they had taken two steps, the door closed and was bolted, oddly from the inside, by another guard.

Lopez showed that guard his papers without speaking a word. The guard nodded and pointed down the torchlit stone hallway. It sloped, ever so slightly, downward.

When he felt certain no one could hear, Lopez whispered to Marlowe, “What the hell was that you did back there at the door?” he asked.

“Theater,” Marlowe answered, smiling. “I could tell instantly, from his accent, that he was from Kettering. I improvised.”

“But—” Lopez began.

“I relied on the camaraderie of the lonely,” Marlowe said simply. “And there is no one so lonely as an Englishman far from home.”

“God in heaven,” Lopez replied, exasperated.

“It got me inside,” Marlowe bristled. “Let's get on with it.”

“Fine. Do you remember the code that Walsingham gave us? The words you are to say to our man to let him know that you are his salvation?”

“I do,” Marlowe said, demonstrating indignation with a rude hand gesture.

The downward slope of the hallway emptied into a small, rounded room. There were no guards. Marlowe began to see the wisdom of staging the event on the Feast of Saint Denis.

The room had three doors, as predicted. Lopez pointed to the one on the left. Marlowe took a single step in that direction before the door in the center opened wide. He froze. Another guard appeared, this one, too, in the white-cross tunic. He seemed only mildly surprised to see Lopez and Marlowe.

“Papers,” was all he said, in a voice that betrayed boredom beyond endurance.

Lopez handed over the false documents and waited in silence for what seemed a very long time.

“All right,” the guard grunted. “He's in here, your father. Come on.”

Lopez didn't move, uncertain what to do.

“I'll wait here, sir,” Marlowe said instantly, assuming his arch accent. “Just you sing out if you need me.”

Lopez hesitated, and then headed toward the center door. The guard looked down, stood back so as not to touch Lopez as he entered. Then, oddly, looked up at Marlowe, nodded once, and closed the door.

Marlowe waited several seconds, looking back up the hallway, and then plunged ahead, grabbing the door on the left with both hands and pulling hard. The door made too much noise, but it opened. The hallway past it was black. Marlowe took several steps before deciding that his eyes would never adjust to the darkness. He backed up quickly to the round room, took a torch from the wall, and was on his way once more.

The dark hall was fetid and cold. There was moss on the walls, and unidentifiable insects skittered away from the torch. Marlowe trod carefully, wary of falling into the very room from which he hoped to rescue his prize. Beyond the sphere of torchlight, he may as well have been at the bottom of the ocean. After a moment he fancied he could hear sounds. Ten more silent steps and he realized that he was hearing the hopeless noises of men breathing, moaning—some, praying.

The smell was overwhelming.

Another five steps and the torch revealed a hole some twenty feet in diameter. As promised there was a ladder mounted on the wall, as well as a nearby sconce in which to place the torch. How he would manage the ladder by himself was a momentary puzzle. Nearly twenty feet in length and a good four feet wide, it would weigh as much as several men.

He secured the torch and considered his dilemma. After a second he realized that gravity was his ally. The primary challenge would be drawing the ladder upward, not lowering it down.

He set his shoulder to one of the ends of the ladder and boosted it from its wall braces. It was heavy, but when he was about to drop it he simply jumped away and let it fall. It made quite a clatter. He shot to the other side and did the same thing, and the entire ladder crashed to the stone floor.

The men below began to call out. Most of them were speaking in strange tongues. None spoke in English.

Down on all fours, Marlowe shoved the ladder with all his might until it inched along toward the hole.

“Look out,” he said softly to the men below. “
Cuidado. Fais attention!
”

He moved the ladder until it teetered precariously on the edge of the hole for a moment, and then slid, more slowly than he expected, downward into the hole, scraping along the stones as it fell.

He shot to the torch, grabbed it, and peered over the side. There were, perhaps, a dozen men crammed into the hole. All of them seemed dead. No one was standing. One was covered in blood.

Marlowe stood on the precipice, momentarily unwilling to descend.

“If you are an Englishman,” Marlowe ventured, “then answer me this: what manner of martin is this, whose wings we should clip?”

There was a long moment of chaotic babbling, but no answer to the coded phrase. Marlowe held the torch closer to his face.

“Can you see me?” he asked more urgently. “I am asking you what manner of
martin
?”

Some of the men fell silent, looking up. Some may even have realized that Marlowe was not one of the guards.

After a few desperate heartbeats, just as Marlowe began to consider that his prize was not there, a young man's voice—a boy's, really—called out hoarsely.

“House martin.”

The first part of the countersign was perfect. Marlowe could not make out the speaker. He stared into the hole.

“And how is that pronounced in the Border Lands?” Marlowe asked.

After a moment, barely above a whisper, the final countersign was given.

“Throckmorton,” the voice rasped.

“Can you raise your hand?” Marlowe asked. “I can't see you.”

A pile of rags in the corner stirred, tried to sit up, raising both hands.

“Can you get up the ladder?”

The limp puppet staggered over to the ladder and tried, three times, to hold it, to lift a foot to the first rung.

Marlowe realized that it would take a century for the man to crawl out of the hole on his own.

“Wait.” Marlowe laid the torch on the floor beside the ladder. “I'm coming.”

Against his better judgment, Marlowe began a speedy, spiderlike descent. Several other prisoners in the hole mustered a bit of energy, seeing some vague, nameless hope of escape.

One foot, three—with each step Marlowe felt his heart insisting strongly that it wanted out of his chest. Two seconds that lasted a year brought him to the lowest rung he needed in order to grab his man's hand.

“Reach,” Marlowe commanded.

A pale, almost skeletal hand shot up like a drowning man's. Marlowe took hold of the wrist and pulled, already climbing back up the ladder. The man groaned.

“Put your feet on the ladder,” he urged. “Climb!”

Marlowe glanced up at the torch and did his best to listen for any approaching footsteps. He knew he'd made noise with the ladder, but he had no way of knowing whether or not it could be heard past the thick wooden door.

He held tight to his prize's hand, and climbed as quickly as he thought he dared. One rung, two, six—it seemed to take another century to reach the top. The man below was doing his best to struggle upward on the ladder with one hand, but his feet faltered and he slipped more than once.

Marlowe glanced down at him.

“I'm going to let go of your hand,” he said. “Take firm hold on the ladder.”

“No,” the man whimpered.

“Take hold,” Marlowe commanded.

With clear reluctance the man let go of Marlowe's hand and flailed for a moment before grabbing the next rung of the ladder.

Marlowe leapt upward onto the floor and grabbed the torch in one hand, taking out his dagger with the other.

“Come on, then,” Marlowe insisted frantically.

The man pulled himself slowly over the rim of the hole, into the torchlight. He was truly little more than a boy, face smudged with dirt and blood, clothes like sheets wrapped around him, hair a rat's nest.

“Take my arm if you need to,” Marlowe whispered, holding out the elbow of his torch arm.

The man heaved himself upward, swung his body around, and came to a precarious halt on the floor. His quavering body threatened to tilt sideways and fall back into the hole. He lunged and grabbed Marlowe's elbow, scattering ash and sparks from the torch.

Some of the other prisoners began coming up the ladder. Marlowe could hear them. It was clear that his man was in no condition to help him pull up the ladder, and he knew he couldn't do it himself. He also found that he didn't have the heart to leave men in such horror. If they could get up the ladder, Marlowe was willing to let them.

How that would play out when it was discovered by the prison guards, or how it would affect the Jewish allies, Marlowe chose not to consider. He only knew he had to get out of the prison with the man on his arm.

He rushed to the door, dragging the man along. He stood a moment, listening. He could hear nothing from the other side of the door.

He looked his man in the eye and whispered, “Stand against the wall, behind the door.”

The man did.

Marlowe grasped the door handle with his dagger hand and leaned hard with all his weight. The door scraped open. The round room was empty.

He looked behind the door.

“Come on,” he whispered to the man. “And stand behind me.”

The man obeyed. Marlowe stepped out into the room, pushed the door closed, and, moving sideways, eye on the center door, replaced the torch whence he had gotten it.

The man was rasping when he breathed. Marlowe turned to him.

“Sh,” he whispered, finger to his lips.

The man nodded and did his best to be silent.

Marlowe found it nearly impossible to simply stand still, staring at the center door, willing Lopez to appear so that they could run. The blood was racing through his veins and thoughts scattered like lightning in his brain.

An eternity passed, and then the center door began to inch open. Marlowe planted himself, grasped his dagger, and held his breath.

The guard he had seen before stepped out, saw Marlowe, and nodded. Lopez appeared behind him.

The guard drew a pistol. Marlowe drew his rapier.

“This is for you,” the guard said to Lopez. “You'll need it.”

Momentarily trying to make sense of the gesture, Marlowe stared at the guard.

“Thank you,” Lopez murmured, taking the gun.

“You're the little brother,” Marlowe concluded.

The man made no response.

Then, without warning, another guard, the one who had been manning the front door of the prison, could be heard clattering down the long hallway.

“What's all that racket down there?” he shouted.

The guard next to Lopez whispered, “Stab me. Here!” The man pulled his tunic up and pointed to a place in his side.

“I'm not certain it's necessary,” Lopez began.

“If you leave me like this,” the guard insisted desperately, “they'll suspect. If you stab me, they'll send me to the hospital, where my brother can get me. Do you understand?”

Lopez nodded and stabbed the man in the proper spot. The man fell back against the wall and slumped to the floor, bleeding profusely, and closed his eyes.

Marlowe could hear the other prisoners from the hole, some of them at least, shuffling up the hall toward the door on the left.

“Why don't you go and take care of the other guard,” Lopez urged. “The one up there in the hallway.”

“Yes,” Marlowe answered, rousing himself. “Look after our man. He's not well.”

With that Marlowe launched himself up the hall. Within ten feet he encountered the guard.

The man was taken by surprise, but training or instinct did not fail him. He drew his sword.

“Stop,” the man warned menacingly.

“Ah, good,” Marlowe said to the man, “military sword against rapier and dagger. The former is a clumsy man's failing; the latter is a clever man's grace. As luck would have it, I am quite graceful. You're about to die.”

That was a lesson from Lopez: taunt an opponent with the idea that he's already lost, even before the fighting has begun.

The guard hesitated and Marlowe thrust his rapier directly into the man's midsection. Blood spotted his tunic.

But the man did not go down. In fact, the wound only seemed to anger him. He raised his sword high above his head and brought it down in a flash.

Marlowe barely dodged it, turning sideways. Then he kicked the sword, hoping to dislodge it from the man's hand. As he did, he nicked the man's fighting arm with his dagger.

The man retained his weapon. He roared and whirled, this time aiming the edge of the blade Marlowe's way.

Marlowe twisted and managed to deflect the cutting edge with the hilt of his rapier, but the force of the blow was so powerful that it kicked him backward against the stone wall.