Crimson Rose (22 page)

‘No.’ Faunt ushered Marlowe in between the huge oak doors. ‘No, I wanted to see you alone. Pick your brains, so to speak. Shall we?’

A manservant in the livery of the Queen took Marlowe’s cloak and sword and disappeared into the oak panelling. ‘You’re travelling light,’ Faunt said, tapping Marlowe lightly in the small of his back.

‘My dagger?’ Marlowe instinctively felt for it. ‘Yes. Careless of me. I lost it.’

Faunt showed the man into an anteroom off the great hall. A huge canvas filled one wall, showing the family both men served, but two generations, as though they all shared the same room as adults. King Harry sat on his throne in the centre, his flat, expressionless face staring out at Marlowe. Beside him his son, Edward, the boy king, knelt in dutiful supplication to his father. Beyond him, the late Queen Mary, hard-faced and watchful, stood beside the swarthy chameleon who was Philip of Spain while Mars, the God of War, crashed into the scene with armed men at his back. But it was the figure on the right of the painting, to Harry’s left, that held the attention of all who saw it. Gloriana, the Queen herself, as she had looked twenty years ago when Marlowe was in his hanging sleeves. The light shone from her forehead and her eyes and with her, olive branch in hand, walked the equally radiant Peace, a dove circling her golden head.

‘Revolting, isn’t it?’ Faunt asked. He hadn’t specifically seen Marlowe staring at the portraits. He just knew he was, just as everyone did who came into this room. That was why Walsingham had put it there. ‘A present from the Queen.’ Faunt handed Marlowe a goblet of Rhenish and raised his in a toast. ‘God bless her!’

‘The Queen.’ Marlowe drank too. The rest of the room was in chaos. The grate was black and empty, the gilded Walsingham arms on the tiles green with neglect. The walls were lined with leather tomes, some of which Marlowe knew from his Cambridge days; others he didn’t. On every conceivable surface there were bundles of papers, parchment, vellum. There were ribbons and wax and, in its red leather case, the Privy Seal.

Faunt saw Marlowe looking at this and threw it across the room at him. The playwright caught it and smiled at the royal insignia of the leopards and lilies. The lilies of France that the Queen didn’t own any more. ‘I often think what damage can be done using that,’ Faunt said, sprawling in a chair by the hearth. ‘What do you say, Kit? Shall we buy ourselves large houses in the country? Something near Canterbury for you, I shouldn’t wonder. Me? I’ve always liked Oxford. And speaking of which, how about a Chancellorship of Cambridge University for you, eh? Or marriage to a foreign princess? Of course, if it’s war you’re after …’ He stopped smiling. ‘It can all be achieved by writing down your wishes and pressing
that
into a lump of wax at the bottom. That’s power, eh? Riches beyond the dreams of avarice.’

Marlowe wasn’t smiling. He threw the cipher back to Faunt and sat down in a carved wooden chair opposite him. ‘What’s all this about, Nicholas? My man Windlass gave me your summons, but I don’t work for you any more – remember?’

Faunt chuckled. It was cold and bitter. ‘You’ve never worked for me, Kit,’ he said and nodded towards the portrait behind the playwright’s head. ‘You work for her. We all do.’

‘Not any more,’ Marlowe said.

Faunt paused. ‘Oh, yes, of course.’ He nodded, sipping his wine. ‘The theatre. I hear
Tamburlaine
’s doing well. Men say you are the toast of London, the Muse’s Darling. Pure spirit. All very gratifying.’

‘It’s my life now.’ Marlowe shrugged.

Faunt was suddenly serious, leaning forward and staring into Marlowe’s dark eyes. ‘Then what were you doing in Blackfriars?’ he asked. ‘The house in Water Lane.’

It was Marlowe’s turn to pause. ‘How did you know I was there?’ he asked.

Faunt burst out laughing and even Marlowe found himself smiling. ‘All right,’ the playwright said, ‘you had me followed. I must be slipping. I didn’t notice.’

‘Ah, you’re just a bit rusty, that’s all. But seriously, Kit, I need to know what you were doing there.’

‘Why?’

‘Secrets of State.’ Faunt looked at him with a level gaze. If any phrase was guaranteed to bring a conversation to an end, that was it.

‘All right.’ Marlowe nodded. ‘One confession for another. You tell me what you were doing at the Rose the other day and I’ll tell you why I was at Blackfriars.’

‘To see the play.’ Faunt smiled. ‘Your
Tamburlaine.
I was impressed.’

‘Liar,’ Marlowe said, folding his arms and waiting for more.

‘You don’t think I’d be impressed?’

‘I don’t think
Tamburlaine
is your sort of entertainment, Nicholas,’ Marlowe said. ‘And besides, there was no play on when you went with a gathering of backers into Philip Henslowe’s box office.’

‘Ah.’ Faunt set his mouth in a rueful line. ‘I take it all back. You’re not rusty at all. What if I told you that I was at the theatre in connection with the house in Blackfriars?’

‘Not a riddle, Nicholas, please.’ Marlowe raised his free hand in supplication. ‘It was a long journey in that boat and I was so cold I all but lost the will to live. Your note said it was urgent that you see me. So, what is it that it couldn’t wait another minute?’

‘The house in Blackfriars.’

Marlowe downed his goblet and stood up. ‘I doubt I’ll get a boat at this hour. Any chance of borrowing one of Walsingham’s horses? I hear he’s got sixty-nine of them in the stables.’

‘All right,’ Faunt relented. It wasn’t something he did often and he didn’t do it well. He refilled Marlowe’s goblet and sat him down. He looked into the man’s eyes. ‘Can you keep a secret?’ he asked.

Marlowe raised an eyebrow, but said nothing. He already knew the whereabouts of enough bodies to bury Nicholas Faunt and, quite possibly, Francis Walsingham too.

‘The house in Blackfriars is a safe house. It belongs to us – the government, I mean. Oh, if you look up the lease in the Stationers’ Office you’ll find the owner is one Ralph Crabtree.’

‘And?’

‘Lord Burghley, to you.’

‘I see.’

‘The rent is paid to Roger Whetstone.’

‘Francis Walsingham?’

‘Christopher Hatton,’ Faunt corrected him.

‘So, various members of the Queen’s Privy Council are hiring out property under assumed names to unknown actors and girls with a head full of air,’ Marlowe reasoned. ‘Bizarre, but hardly a crime.’

‘No, you miss the point.’ Faunt leaned forward. ‘It’s a
safe
house. It’s a place we put people for interrogation purposes … Oh, not the unpleasant stuff – all that’s a matter for Waad and Topcliffe at the Tower. No, it’s a house where Walsingham has his little fireside chats. You’ve heard of Father Walter Gervaise?’

‘The Jesuit.’ Marlowe nodded. ‘Tried to kill the Queen two years ago. He died while trying to escape.’

‘You see, there you have it.’ Faunt leaned back, sampling the Rhenish again. ‘Wrong on all three counts. And you’re supposed to be one of us.’

‘I told you …’

‘Yes, yes, I know.’ Faunt cut the man short. ‘You’ve left the service. Put it all behind you. Yes, I know.’

‘So … Gervaise?’ Despite himself Marlowe couldn’t contain his curiosity.

‘
Was
a Jesuit until Walsingham had a word in the house at Blackfriars. I don’t know why we keep Topcliffe and his infernal machines. Just a word from Walsingham is all that’s required. No, he didn’t try to kill the Queen – that was just a story we put about, to smoke out a few others, as it were. As for the stories of his demise, well, they too are much exaggerated. He is currently – and I shouldn’t really be telling you this – reporting on our behalf from Padua. When he’s not there, he’s living with Mistress Gervaise and all the little Gervaises somewhere out on the Essex marshes. Well, you can’t have everything.’

‘I see.’ Marlowe felt enlightened.

‘I wonder if you do.’ Faunt frowned. ‘You didn’t know about the house? Its purpose, I mean?’

‘No,’ Marlowe admitted. ‘This is the first I’ve heard of it. I’d gone there over the Eleanor Merchant business.’

‘Yes.’ Faunt nodded solemnly. ‘Eleanor. A great loss.’

‘You knew her?’

‘Of course,’ Faunt said, reaching for one of Walsingham’s pipes from the rack and looking around for a tobacco jar. ‘She ran the house for us.’

‘Did she?’ Marlowe was sitting up now, frowning. ‘Is that why someone killed her?’

‘I thought Shakespeare killed her.’

‘So does the High Constable,’ Marlowe nodded, ‘and half of London.’

‘Do you drink smoke, Kit?’ Faunt asked, ramming the tobacco into the bowl.

‘All they that don’t love tobacco are fools,’ Marlowe said.

‘Then light yourself a pipe. You and I have some secrets to swap, I believe.’

‘You first.’ Marlowe smiled, reaching for another of Walsingham’s pipes.

Faunt smiled too. He could fence all night with Marlowe, with just a short break for supper. He recognized much of himself in the deadly young man sitting with him; as he had been ten or a dozen years ago, keen to make his mark in a dangerous world. He never underestimated men like Marlowe, perhaps because there weren’t any men like Marlowe. Not at all. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘So Eleanor Merchant was on our payroll; that made her a target. Especially given the nature of her house.’

‘I took it to be a bawdy house,’ Marlowe said. ‘Night visitors. Whispers after dark.’

‘That’s what we hoped the world would think.’ Faunt nodded. ‘The problem was that, to put off the long noses of the Hugh Thynnes of this fair city of ours, we had to make it seem as if it was an outwardly respectable place – that’s where friend Shakespeare comes in. The only other lodger is a printer, a man named Calshott.’

‘Not one of ours?’

Faunt showed the mild surprise in his face, wreathed in smoke as it was.
Ours
. Was the wayward sheep returning to the fold in spite of himself? ‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘The man’s an innocent. Works at the sign of the Moor’s Head in Paternoster Row. If word got out that others used the house, everyone would assume what you did – that Mistress Merchant presided over a place of ill-repute. Eleanor’s mistake, if that’s what it was, is that she didn’t take her simpler sister into her confidence. When I spoke to the girl she clearly didn’t have a clue as to what was going on under what is now her own roof. We’ll have to move on, of course. I’ve told Walsingham as much.’

‘You said Eleanor was a target.’ Marlowe blew rings to the ceiling. ‘For whom?’

‘Well, that’s the Devil of it,’ Faunt said. ‘I don’t know. Some pretty slippery customers have used that house over the years – and the outcome isn’t always as happy for us as Father Gervaise. Some men have refused to be turned. Some have got away. Even so, even if they had some grievance, why pick on the woman who provided bed and board? Walsingham, certainly, and me, but Eleanor? No, this is not about revenge.’

‘So what is it about?’

‘You’ve been to the house. What did you make of it? The furniture and fittings, I mean?’

Marlowe thought back. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘Expensive. I don’t know what Shaxsper was paying in rent, but I doubt he could afford it. Of course, she had her salary from you.’

Faunt chuckled. ‘Eleanor wasn’t a field agent, Marlowe. What we paid her wouldn’t feed one of Walsingham’s horses for very long. It might not even feed one of his hawks.’

‘But the jug …’

Faunt looked up. ‘The jug? What jug?’

Marlowe knocked out the pipe on the hearth. He enjoyed drinking smoke but it didn’t clear the head, as many men claimed. And he needed a clear head now. ‘A silver jug,’ he said, watching Faunt intently. ‘Just less than a cubit high. Solid silver. Wrought with writhing figures and the Devil’s face. Dee thought …’

‘Dee?’ Faunt sat upright. ‘What has he to do with all this?’

Marlowe looked at him with a wry expression. ‘John Dee has to do with everyone, Nicholas. Rather like your good self, in that respect.’

‘He’s at Whitehall, isn’t he?’

‘On his way abroad, yes. I showed him the jug.’

‘Eleanor’s jug?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why?’

‘Because … because there is something about it. Something that says it is the reason – or part of the reason – Eleanor Merchant died. Constance told me the thing comes and goes. It is not always there.’

‘Any more than Constance is,’ Faunt murmured. ‘What did she mean? The thing has magical properties? It disappears at will? You shouldn’t spend too much time with John Dee, Kit; he’ll turn your mind. Where is this jug now?’

‘I left it with Dr Dee,’ Marlowe said. ‘He locked it away in a cupboard in his rooms. He plans to put it somewhere safe, or so he says. Whether he means to keep it safe from men or to keep men safe from it, I was by no means clear.’

A silence fell between the two as a servant crept into the room and lit the candles. He drew the curtains and waited while another came in carrying a tray of gingerbread and candied fruit. Faunt helped himself once the pair had gone. He waved to Marlowe to join him.

‘The problem is,’ he said, sinking his teeth into a sugar plum, ‘this is not just about Eleanor Merchant, perplexing though her case is.’

‘Not?’ Marlowe paused and pointed to something on the tray. ‘Is that Pine Apple?’

‘Yes,’ Faunt told him. ‘Grown in the Queen’s glass houses at Placentia. I can take it or leave it alone, to be honest, but Sir Francis loves it. Helps his ague, or so he says.’

Marlowe stayed his hand. The last thing he wanted to do was to eat Sir Francis Walsingham’s last slice of Pine Apple.

‘Do take it,’ Faunt said. ‘We have more than we can possibly eat in the kitchens. You were saying?’

‘Not just about Eleanor Merchant? Why not?’

‘At the moment, I’m more interested in John Garrett.’

‘Who?’

‘The Puritan found by Henslowe’s Bear Garden yesterday morning.’

‘Oh, yes. I heard about that. How do you know who he was? Windlass tells me he is unidentified.’

‘Windlass needs to keep his gossip more up to date,’ Faunt said. ‘But, surely, Kit, I don’t need to dignify that with an answer. We
are
the Queen’s men.’

Marlowe smiled. Indeed they were.