Scorpions' Nest (13 page)

‘No!’ Aldred rasped. ‘No, by no means.’ The vintner wasn’t going into the explanations again.

The voice from the back room changed its tone. It was as though a tiger was purring like a pet kitten. ‘Solly,’ it called huskily, ‘why don’t you come in here now?’

Aldred looked like a rabbit caught by a stoat. He cleared his throat. ‘I have friends here,’ he called back. ‘And I don’t think it’s Friday, is it?’

‘Let’s pretend it’s Friday,’ the woman shouted. ‘And your friends can wait. It isn’t as if you will be long.’

In the mellow candlelight, Aldred’s blush almost went unnoticed. The other three looked at the ceiling, through the dark window, at their own fingernails, anywhere but at the little vintner. He swallowed hard and called, sweetly, ‘But beloved…’

‘Get in here, Solomon Aldred,’ boomed the voice. ‘Don’t make me come and get you.’

Aldred looked frantically from man to man, but none of them spoke. Then Marlowe took pity on him, in a way. ‘Please, Solomon,’ he said, ‘don’t mind us. Go and pretend it is Friday. I will explain what we have discovered to Master Phelippes. It doesn’t need us both.’

‘No, but I…’

‘No, no,’ Phelippes said, standing and helping Aldred to his feet. ‘Off you go. We’ll see you in an hour or so, will we?’

‘More like a minute,’ rumbled the voice from beyond the door. There was a creak and a rustle as Aldred’s enormous inamorata prepared to join them in the shop.

Aldred looked at the door, then at the men seated around the candle and, with a whimper, went to his doom.

In the silence that followed his departure, the three men looked at each other, then Johns ventured, ‘That was unusual. But of course, I am not generally cognizant of the life of a projectioner.’

‘No,’ Phelippes said. ‘Even for a projectioner that was a little unusual. I’m not sure about you two, but I would be more comfortable discussing our business elsewhere.’

Distressing noises had begun to emanate from the back room and the others, with a quick nod, jumped up and made for the door, Johns taking the trouble to blow out the candle. The last man out pulled the door shut behind him.

The three men – the two projectioners and the professor – had walked a little way down the road before Marlowe began to laugh. By the time they reached Phelippes and Johns’ lodgings they were as helpless as any drunkards and they had to pause for a while outside to compose themselves.

‘It’s a while since I had a laugh like that,’ Marlowe said. ‘The English College is not somewhere where laughter is welcome, particularly.’

‘Corpus Christi is the same,’ Johns said. ‘Now Norgate is gone and Harvey is running the place…’

‘Norgate is gone?’ Marlowe broke in. ‘Dead?’

‘As good as. He tried to convene a meeting to convict his housekeeper of heresy some weeks ago. It was the last straw.’

‘He has always been a little eccentric,’ Marlowe mused. ‘And his housekeeper is a very frightening woman, as I recall.’

‘The meeting was called in retrospect,’ Johns said. ‘He had already tied her to a stake in the quad and tried to set fire to her. Heaven only knows what would have happened if the wood had not been damp.’

‘Ah. I see your problem. But Harvey? How was that allowed to happen? Surely, Dr Copcott…?’ Marlowe suddenly realized something and the knowledge ran down his spine like iced water. ‘Is Greene still hanging around?’

‘I understand they have fallen out. I left Cambridge as soon as I tendered my resignation –’ he held up a hand for silence as Marlowe opened his mouth – ‘but the rumours had already begun.’

‘You have described a hot friend cooling, Professor Johns,’ Marlowe said. ‘I am glad to hear it, though. Greene wants something I have hidden in my room.’

‘It won’t be your room by now, if I know Gabriel Harvey,’ Johns said.

‘That won’t matter. It is hidden well enough to wait for me until I get back.’

‘Which will be never if we stand around out here much longer,’ Phelippes said. ‘I will have caught the sweating sickness from the cold and you will never solve your code or whatever it is Aldred found.’

‘Shhh,’ Marlowe warned. ‘There are ears everywhere, Master Phelippes. It doesn’t matter what language you speak, there is someone who can understand it. You can’t trust Latin at all, almost everyone has a little, from their church services. Greek is better, but even then you can’t be sure.’

‘Hebrew?’ Johns ventured.

‘Better still, but I’m not sure I could follow it,’ Marlowe said.

‘Shame on you,’ Johns said. ‘What about Walloon? Portuguese?’

‘I think the best plan is to just say nothing in the open, Doctor,’ Marlowe said. ‘We want no misunderstanding.’

‘So we can go inside, then?’ Phelippes said, crossly, slapping his arms to try to get warm.

‘That sounds an ideal plan,’ Marlowe said. ‘Lead the way. I need to discuss a little job I want you to do for me, Master Phelippes.’

Two men wandered the edge of the moat of Fotheringay Castle that Thursday. A weak sun gilded the old stones and the only sound was the splash of a trout leaping for the last gnats skimming low over the water. Lord Burghley’s hair and beard had whitened over the last year and he needed more light these days to cope with the scrawled state letters everybody from the Queen to the scullery-maid bombarded him with. The cane he had once snapped upright at each step was now a crutch, a third and essential leg and his progress over the Northamptonshire grass was slow.

Francis Walsingham was edgy. The pain from his boil was gone but the lancing had been horrific and he had taken to his bed for three days to get over it. Burghley was his mentor, as wise as an owl and just as silent in his decisions. Owls hunted by night and their strikes were swift and deadly. Any Catholic vole bustling on its way to a Mass was fair game to Lord Burghley. The old man had weathered more storms than Job but the greatest rose up before him now, in the calm of a Midlands evening, with the trout leaping and the cold and calculating Secretary at his elbow.

‘What did you think of her performance today, Francis?’ Burghley asked. ‘Our Queen of Scots?’

‘Better than I expected, my lord,’ Walsingham said, staring straight ahead. ‘The stick was good.’ He could have kicked himself for that, but it was out now in the air and he could not retract it.

Burghley snorted. ‘She has rheumatism, apparently,’ he said, limping on. ‘Chartley was damp.’

Walsingham smiled. ‘Not as damp as Fotheringay, I’ll wager.’

‘I’d forgotten her eyes,’ Burghley said, growing poetic. ‘The richest hazel. I’m not surprised that men are captivated by her.’

‘I’ll overlook that treason, my lord,’ the spymaster said with a wry smile, ‘bearing in mind the business we’re about.’

‘What are we about, Francis?’ the Secretary asked. ‘I sometimes wonder.’

‘She’s put on weight at Chartley,’ Walsingham observed. ‘Full and fat, you might say.’

‘Not too fat for the axe, I’ll warrant.’ Burghley looked grim. ‘Oh, Mother of God, no.’

Walsingham followed the old man’s gaze to where a Privy Councillor was hurrying across the grass tufts towards them, striding on his dancer’s legs with ease. ‘The Queen’s bellwether,’ he muttered. He didn’t like Sir Christopher Hatton and here at Fotheringay he liked him less and less every day.

‘My lord.’ Hatton doffed his hat in a courtly flourish to Burghley and nodded curtly to Walsingham. Burghley sighed. Christopher Hatton had the political grasp of Burghley’s donkey at Hatfield, but he was a formidable jouster, that most pointless and suicidal of sports and his galliard had captivated the Queen.

‘Vice Chamberlain,’ Burghley acknowledged him, laying stress, as he always did, on the first word.

‘May I have a word, sir?’ Hatton asked, his still-golden curls glowing in the fading evening light. He glanced at Walsingham. ‘Alone.’

Burghley walked on, shuffling next to the Vice Chamberlain’s great and easy strides. ‘Anything you have to say is fit for the ears of Sir Francis. We are all members of the same Privy Council, when all is said and done.’

‘But all was not said and done today, my lord, was it?’

Burghley stopped and frowned up at the man. He was still a popinjay, in his colleyweston cloak and roisterer’s swagger. How such a man could have graduated from the Inner Temple was beyond Burghley’s comprehension. ‘Meaning?’ the old man snapped.

Hatton was temporarily at a loss for words. ‘The trial, my lord,’ he said, ‘of the Queen of Scots.’ He looked at the Secretary of State, then at the spymaster and saw nothing but emptiness. ‘Did you or did you not, gentlemen,’ he asked, hands on hips, ‘sit in that hall today and witness what I witnessed?’

‘We did,’ said Walsingham, sensing that Burghley was walking on again and had no intention of engaging this oaf in legal fisticuffs.

‘Where were the jury? Her Majesty’s counsel? Those letters the prosecution hinges on – where are they? Where are the witnesses in her defence?’

‘Most of them are propping up London Bridge’s spikes,’ Walsingham told him, ‘at least their heads are. Nether limbs you will find displayed in the Catholic parts of this great realm of ours.’

‘The secretaries.’ Hatton wouldn’t give an inch. ‘Er… Nan and Curle. Why were they not called? The Queen demanded it.’

‘We have their written statements,’ Burghley muttered, not bothering to look Hatton in the face. ‘Let that be enough.’

‘By God, it isn’t enough!’ the Vice Chamberlain roared, blocking Burghley’s path.

Walsingham edged between them. ‘I remember another court room,’ he said softly. ‘The trial of Father Ballard. You were impressive then. How did it go? I was particularly struck by it. You asked Ballard “Is this your religio Catholica?” and before the old Papist could answer, you hit him with “No, rather it is Diabolica”. That was very good.’

‘Don’t patronize me, Walsingham,’ Hatton sneered. ‘I’m a better lawyer than you.’

Burghley snorted.

‘I saw no justice today,’ Hatton said, keeping his voice level with an audible effort. ‘If we are to try the Queen—’

‘Justice!’ Burghley spat, spinning the man round. ‘Hatton, do you love your Queen?’

‘Of course.’ the Vice Chamberlain stood half a head taller as if to prove it.

‘Roughly from behind, we hear,’ Walsingham muttered and in an instant Hatton’s rapier tip was tickling his throat. Burghley surprised himself by being able to move so fast and his cane batted the blade aside, causing only superficial damage to the spymaster’s ruff. His cold grey eyes bored into the Vice Chamberlain’s. ‘We know you are loyal, Christopher,’ he said. ‘And we know you would lay down your life for Her Majesty. We also know that you are an honest man. So…’ he felt the tension slip and put a gentle hand on the courtier’s padded shoulder, ‘no, there was no justice today. Every man in that court speaks for the Queen of England. And the only way to see the Queen of England live is to see the Queen of Scots dead. Walsingham here would do it with poison. Isn’t that right, Francis?’

Walsingham slipped his hand into his doublet and produced a little phial of dark glass which he waved slowly in the air.

‘But it’s important we put on a show,’ Burghley explained as though to the village idiot, ‘so that the world cannot point a finger at our Queen and call her a murderess. When the time comes she will put her signature and seal to an official document. And she will be condemning a traitor, one who has sworn to depose Elizabeth and have her head. Can you doubt it?’

‘Will they call her less of a murderess,’ Hatton asked, ‘if she signs Mary’s death warrant? Won’t she always have blood on her hands? I want no part in it.’

Walsingham had already seen the riders galloping full tilt across the angle of the October fields, black silhouettes against the purpling sky. ‘I don’t think you have a choice, Sir Christopher,’ he said. ‘I don’t think any of us do.’

The riders hauled their reins in and the officer at their head, wearing the Queen’s livery under his cloak, swung from the saddle, bowing low and handing a letter to Burghley.

‘From the Queen?’ Burghley asked the messenger.

‘From Her Majesty, my lord,’ the man confirmed. ‘From Nonsuch.’

The Secretary of State threw his stick to Walsingham and broke the royal seal. He squinted to read the clerk’s scribbled hand and checked the elaborate swirls of the signature carefully. ‘Gentlemen,’ he growled. ‘She’s stopped it.’

‘What?’ Walsingham and Hatton chorused.

‘The trial of the Queen of Scots will reconvene in London, ten days from now.’

As the horsemen turned their animals away, Walsingham watched them go and muttered to himself, ‘Why can’t she, just for once, let us get on with our jobs?’

Michael Johns couldn’t sleep. He thought it would be easier, now they had moved out of the noisy inn to the relative peace of Solomon Aldred’s best bedroom. He had taken a while to get over the embarrassment of sleeping above Aldred and his frightening lady, but at last he had stopped listening for noises he could only imagine and he found the bed, though still half full of Thomas Phelippes, comfortable. But his head was spinning with so much information he couldn’t make sense of it all. He had been learning things, difficult things, since before he was five years old. He still had the scars on his back given to him by his father for failing to master the fourth declension just after his fourth birthday. But in all his years of learning, information had come at him in a steady stream, each piece clicking neatly into the matrix of its fellows to make a wall he could trust, a wall he could hide behind in safety.

But since he had left Cambridge, and especially since he had come to Rheims, information had broken over his head like a torrent and putting it into any kind of order was coming hard. His wall had broken down under the flood and he had nowhere to hide. He had loved Kit Marlowe since he first saw him, a scholar all eyes and hair standing in the crowd of his peers what seemed like a lifetime ago. And now here he was, a projectioner, a man with secrets, paying the piper, calling the tune.

Johns let his head fall back on the pillow with a sigh. If he woke Thomas Phelippes he wouldn’t be sorry; he needed to talk. He knew Phelippes was a code-breaker. He knew he was here in Rheims against his better judgement, against his wishes. And, if the fragment of code Marlowe had passed over the night before was any guide, he was here fruitlessly. As soon as the two men had looked at it, in the wavering candlelight in their shared room, Phelippes had admitted defeat at once. The type of code had been simple enough; it was a substitution, for certain. But without the original book it came from, it would never be broken. It was as simple as that. Even taking the books that Johns himself owned – more than most men, but still pitifully few – it would take a lifetime to find the page. And if the original was in a library somewhere, or even an original piece, written for the purpose and committed to memory, it was truly an impossible task.