Scorpions' Nest (24 page)

Walsingham had thought about it and he tucked his hands under his armpits for comfort. ‘She’ll kiss him in public – after the usual toadying and ring-licking, of course. In private? Boxed ears will be the least of it.’

‘Bollocks, do you think?’ Nicholas Faunt enjoyed ruminating on the discomforts of others.

‘For taking on the mantle of Stadtholder of the United Provinces without Her Majesty’s express permission? Count on it.’

Faunt was delighted. He’d never liked the Earl of Leicester. The man’s neck was too long and his arrogance knew no bounds. And then there were those rumours about his wife and those stairs. In all his time as intelligencer and projectioner, Nicholas Faunt had never heard of anyone breaking their neck falling down just three steps. If Faunt had his way he’d put a noose around that long neck himself.

‘The English College,’ Walsingham murmured in case any of the Queen’s boatmen had ears. ‘Anything?’

‘Not since last week, Sir Francis,’ Faunt said. ‘Aldred says Marlowe is doing what he can but he’s run into what he calls a little local difficulty.’

‘And you didn’t think to mention this to me?’ Walsingham’s cold gaze could freeze a man.

‘You know Aldred.’ Faunt shrugged, wincing a little as a gust of wind caught him as the little convoy took to mid-river at Rotherhithe. ‘Always moaning. You could write a book about his whinges.’

‘Is he sound, do you think, Nicholas? Can he be turned?’

‘Aldred?’ Faunt frowned. ‘Straight as a die, Sir Francis. One of the best. Not terribly bright, of course…’

‘I didn’t mean him.’ Walsingham blew on his numb fingers now. ‘I was thinking of Marlowe.’

‘Ah.’ Faunt raised an eyebrow. What did the spymaster know that he didn’t? Probably quite a lot.

‘He’s sound,’ Walsingham told himself aloud. ‘I know it. It’s just… that damned place, Nicholas. The English College.’

Faunt took up the horn beaker on the little table beside him and passed Walsingham the other one. He raised it high. ‘May it fall through the Rue de Venise and into the bowels of Hell!’ he toasted.

For once, Marlowe allowed himself the pleasure of visiting the wine shop in daylight, so he didn’t have to run the gauntlet of the redoubtable Veronique. Her sturdy shadow was lurking at the back of the shop, doing something arcane with muslin, sieves, bottles and Solomon Aldred. Marlowe gave her a small wave as he passed through on his way to the winding stair, calling over his shoulder, ‘If I could pray your indulgence, Master Aldred, when you have a moment?’

He rapped on the door of the chamber that did not smell of old lady and was pleased to see Thomas Phelippes, without his bandaging, sitting at the small table, an ill-smelling candle at hand, surrounded by piles of paper, mostly covered with inky daubs and scribbles. Phelippes was only marginally less inky, but he looked happily occupied and so Marlowe, having tipped him a nod, went to the window, where Michael Johns sat, a book in his hand.

Marlowe smiled to see him sitting there, absorbed in his work, just like the old days. He scarcely recognized him without some writing or another in front of his nose.

‘Doctor Johns,’ he said, his voice just a breath above a whisper. ‘How is it going?’

Johns closed the book, but kept his finger in the page. ‘Hello, Kit,’ he said. He nodded down to the book. ‘Excuse me for keeping this to hand. It is a translation into French from Greek of an early biography of Augustine of Hippo. I am finding it fascinating as a study; translating it in my head is refreshing.’

Marlowe looked at his tutor with affection. It wasn’t every man who would be so exercised by translating a text in French, written by a Greek on an Algerian bishop. ‘Have you been shopping?’ he asked. He was sorry that his tutor was not venturing out more into Rheims. It seemed a shame, having come so far.

‘I got it from the librarian at the English College,’ Johns said, absent-mindedly, his eyes wandering back to the book. ‘When I was resting in your room, after… well, you know.’ He tipped his head at where Phelippes sat, engrossed, at his table.

‘I didn’t know you’d met,’ Marlowe said, surprised.

‘Not met as such. He came into your room as I was tidying up. I was a bit surprised the way he just came in. I thought that might just be the English College way. Anyway, he had this with him, and he lent it to me. It is very fascinating. I am translating in reverse, trying to see what happens when different voices take on the task.’ He sighed. ‘It is hard to concentrate with so much happening.’

So Marlowe had been wrong to worry about Johns’ closeted life. He didn’t want to go outside where people were talking real language. He preferred his words to be dead. Phelippes preferred his buried. Marlowe hoped his tiny bit of news wouldn’t deflect Johns too much from his somewhat peculiar purpose. ‘I think I may have something to help with the code,’ he said, quietly.

Phelippes spun round, in a welter of ink, parchment, quills and cries of pain. ‘What do you have?’ he yelled, rather louder than he intended.

‘Excuse him,’ Johns said. ‘I’ve noticed this about Thomas. When he hasn’t used his voice in a while, he can get a bit loud.’

‘Sorry,’ Phelippes said. ‘Was I shouting? I do that, or so I’m told. Shall I begin again?’ He mopped a little ineffectually at a pool of ink which was dripping onto his leg. ‘What do you have, Master Marlowe?’ He made a face like a smile and sat, expectantly. A casual observer may have thought him relaxed, but his non-inky leg was trembling with excitement under the table.

Marlowe was suddenly aware of how little he had brought with him. The little scrap of inky parchment didn’t look like much, but it had come from Laurenticus’ room and was stained with the man’s last blood as it pumped from his body. It had to be important; a man may have died because of it. He reached into his doublet and drew it out. Phelippes and Johns jostled him to see what he had in his hand, then drew back, disappointed.

There was a pause, filled with the sound of Phelippes’ last hope leaving the room on ghostly feet. Finally, Johns spoke for them all. ‘Is that it?’

Marlowe suddenly felt more than a little testy. It was true that Phelippes had had a nasty stab wound and that Johns was lucky to be unscathed. It was true that they were not really used to being anywhere but their studies, looked after, fed, clothed, watered, by people who knew that they had more brains in their little fingers than they, their servants, had in their whole family. It was true that they were in a strange country, assaulted, given snails to eat and vinegary wine to drink, sharing a bed with each other and foreign pests which bit and irritated. Added to which they were both discovering that the beautiful French of Molinet and Marot was not the French of the streets of Rheims. Marlowe accepted all of that, and more, but was still rather irked that they didn’t even bother to find out the risks he had run to get this possibly vital clue. He was about to unburden himself in no uncertain terms when the door opened and Solomon Aldred poked his head into the room.

‘Oh,’ he said, ‘you are here. It was so quiet, I wondered. What’s happening?’ He glanced at the ink, dripping now onto the floor. ‘I wouldn’t let Veronique see that, if I were you.’ He looked from one man to the other, his eyes as bright as a blackbird squaring up to a worm. He finally read some of the mood. ‘Is everything all right?’

Marlowe drew a breath to tell him exactly what wasn’t all right, but Johns forestalled him.

‘Kit here has brought something he thinks might help with the code unravelling,’ he said.

‘Excellent!’ Aldred said, stepping forward and rubbing his hands together.

‘But it is rather…’ His voice died away. Like all men of normal height, he tried to avoid the next word around the diminutive vintner, but had no choice. ‘Small.’

Aldred’s enthusiasm was undimmed. ‘Let’s have a look at it, all the same,’ he said. ‘The best things come in small packages, or so they say.’ He smiled brightly. ‘Come on, Master Marlowe. Let’s see it. Where is it?’ He looked around, excitedly.

Marlowe reached out his hand and uncurled the fingers, to show the small folded square of parchment lying in his palm. It had been folded so tightly and for so long it looked even smaller than it was. Aldred looked at it, goggling disbelievingly, then, with the same amazed expression on his face, he looked up at Marlowe.

‘It’s rather small,’ he said. He reached for it. ‘May I?’

Marlowe inclined his head in the briefest of nods.

Aldred took the parchment between finger and thumb and carefully unfolded it. ‘Blood?’ he asked, with a flick of a nail at the stain.

‘Sadly, yes,’ Marlowe agreed.

‘Whose? Laurenticus’?’

‘Again, yes,’ Marlowe said. ‘We are lucky, though, that it hasn’t obscured the writing.’

‘What’s this other piece of parchment that it’s wrapped in?’ Aldred asked, preparing to throw it down.

‘Oh, no, Solomon, don’t throw that away,’ Marlowe said, holding out a hand. ‘I had forgotten that was there. It’s just a sketch of the cartouche on a ring that was also found in Laurenticus’ bed.’

Aldred smoothed it out, turned it round and grunted. He held it out to Phelippes for him to see. ‘Geneva?’ he muttered to him.

‘Where else?’ Phelippes agreed.

‘That’s an interesting wrinkle,’ Aldred told Marlowe, ‘but not much of a surprise, with his general behaviour, as I’ve heard it.’

‘Geneva?’ Johns asked, puzzled.

Marlowe reached behind him and patted his tutor on the shoulder, absent-mindedly. ‘Not important,’ he said. ‘No bearing on the code, except that possibly Master Phelippes might need to bear a few more languages in mind, to be on the safe side.’

‘I always test a number of languages,’ Phelippes said, a touch pompously, as experts often tend to do.

‘This writing is minute,’ Aldred said, carrying it to the window. ‘It is very clear, even so.’

Phelippes drew himself up. ‘Every man who claims to be a code-writer must learn to write neatly and smaller than an imp might do. When we are plucked from the obscurity of our colleges and trained to use our logical brains, we spend no less than six weeks learning to whittle a goose feather down to less than the thickness of a baby’s first hair. We learn how to mill and distil the smoothest of inks, so that no grain can impede the progress of our cipher. Neatness and attention to the smallest detail are our watchwords…’

As though housed in one head, all the eyes but his in the room swivelled to the chaos that was his desk. Drifts and avalanches of parchment and feather were spread over the surface, with the odd trencher and slice of bread amongst them. Johns had remembered a cat liking to visit them when they had first arrived and he feared that it might be in there too, possibly with a litter of kittens by this time.

Phelippes caught the direction of their gaze and dismissed it with a shrug. ‘Of course, I am not
writing
a code at present, merely punishing my poor brain trying to break one. That’s different. Where was I?’

‘Neatness,’ Johns offered.

‘Ah, yes. Um… did that have anything to do with anything?’ Phelippes had lost his thread.

‘Not really,’ said Aldred, sighing. ‘I was simply saying this writing is extremely tiny. And neat, as you say. The letters are all stacked up in groups of –’ he paused as he counted, using the tip of his finger to trace the lines – ‘five by five.’

‘Five by five is usual,’ Phelippes said, dismissively. ‘That gives the letters of the alphabet.’

Aldred was the only one who counted silently for a moment on his fingers. ‘Not really,’ he said. ‘It’s one short.’

‘Indeed,’ Johns said, ‘but not really. Many people interchange I and J.’

‘I personally usually interchange U and W when trying out codes,’ Phelippes said. ‘But, yes, Master Aldred, that is how it works. It still makes sense, when you have the rest of the word.’

‘I see,’ said Aldred, doubtfully.

‘Let’s see your piece of paper, then, Master Marlowe,’ Phelippes said, sounding like a mother soothing a fractious child. Aldred handed it over and the code-breaker took it over to his candle. He took up a lens mounted on three little brass legs and passed it over the pages. The others waited patiently, one less patiently the others.

Eventually, Aldred spoke. ‘Well? What does it say?’

Phelippes smiled acidly. ‘Precisely?’ he asked.

‘Yes.’ Aldred’s reply was full of breathless anticipation, but the others were ready for what came next. Even so, Marlowe, over his irritation, was hard pressed to keep a straight face.

‘Wofnut,’ Phelippes remarked. ‘Tufurufuh, arfptun, talwul, marmsa. Seffa, vewuls, g… sorry, there’s a tiny bloodstain there, so I’m not sure… I think it’s gustufwuh, begpucl, ampnut.’ He paused. ‘Unless I miss my guess.’

Aldred narrowed his eyes at the code-breaker and suddenly the temperature in the room seemed to drop. Marlowe almost expected to see icicles form on the edge of the table, made from the dripping ink. He knew that someone would do this one day. That someone would underestimate Aldred. He just hoped he could move fast enough to save Phelippes from another nasty stabbing. This time, the smiler with the knife would know exactly what he was aiming at.

‘Sometimes,’ Aldred said, ‘I think that people underestimate me. You, for example, Master Phelippes, think that I am an idiot vintner, at the beck and call of a large woman. You think that I have forgotten that I am a projectioner, in the pay of Francis Walsingham. You think I have become a Frenchman in all but blood, and that I don’t notice when I am being made fun of. That would be a very big mistake on your part, Master Phelippes.’

Phelippes tried a smile and reached a hand out towards the little projectioner, but whether in friendship or to prevent him coming nearer, it wasn’t clear. Johns took a step behind Kit Marlowe, in his view the very best place to be when there might be violence.

Aldred was still speaking. ‘So, I am wondering, Master Phelippes, why Sir Francis Walsingham sent me here, to sit and watch the scorpions’ nest. There are not many animals which are immune to a scorpion’s poison, Master Phelippes. The best way to live long in the company of the creatures is to be quick on your feet and watch out for the sting. Are you quick on your feet, Master Phelippes? Can you avoid a sting?’