Traitor's Storm (23 page)

‘Of course,’ Marlowe said. ‘I have looked at them until my head ached. Perhaps someone else can make sense of them.’

‘It could be a code,’ Faunt told him. ‘One for Thomas Phelippes. You know how he loves this sort of thing.’

Marlowe did. Francis Walsingham’s code-breaker was a genius. If anyone could decipher the thing, Thomas Phelippes could. ‘Are they still on their way to us?’ Marlowe asked. ‘The Armada, I mean.’

Faunt shrugged. ‘Who knows, Kit,’ he said. ‘Our Intelligence changes from day to day.’

‘It’s just that … I think we have a spy in our midst.’

Faunt sat upright, in mid-swig from the goatskin. There seemed to be no one about; just the boatman dozing at his oars and Marlowe’s horse cropping the lush grass of what once had been Silver Street. ‘How typical of you, Master Marlowe, if I may say as much, to keep the most important news until the last. The cuckoo in the nest, as my all-too-brief brief said. Anyone in mind?’

Marlowe shook his head. ‘I
am
a playwright,’ he said with a smile. ‘I can’t let my best plot line out too soon. But, to be serious, there are whispers about George Carey.’

‘Carey?’ Faunt was aghast. ‘He’s the Queen’s cousin, man.’

‘And Cain was Abel’s brother,’ Marlowe reminded him.

‘Point taken.’ Faunt nodded. ‘But still … George Carey?’

‘Or his wife.’

‘Ah.’

Was that the faintest of blushes that Marlowe saw flit across the marble face of Nicholas Faunt?

‘Elizabeth,’ the man went on. ‘I’ve met her at court a few times. You think she might …?’

‘I know she does,’ Marlowe smiled. ‘The question is, is she sleeping with the enemy? Take it from me, Nicholas, this Island is like a kettle, bubbling and seething with hatred and hostility. Men rise from the grave and towns disappear. Something will crack soon. And one of us had better be ready.’

Faunt stood up and called to wake the boatman. ‘There’s a rumour in the west that Carey took a prize, a Spanish ship of the line.’

Marlowe nodded. ‘News travels well,’ he said. ‘A pinnace. Landed on the Island.’

‘Lost?’

‘Lost, be damned,’ Marlowe said. ‘It was invited here, at a specific time and a specific place. The question is, by whom?’

Faunt looked confused. ‘But … surely if George Carey invited the bastards, he’d hardly take them as a prize?’

‘You are doubtless familiar with the wooden horse of Troy, Nicholas,’ Marlowe said.

‘Doubtless,’ Faunt nodded.

‘There are twenty Spaniards languishing in the gaol at Newport, brought into the heart of the town on the orders of Carey himself. He now owns the only fighting ship the Wight possesses. Everybody tells me that George Carey does not have a friend in the world, but what if that isn’t true? What if the men of the Wight are merely waiting for his signal, to release the Spaniards and hoist the flag of Spain over Carisbrooke? Medina Sidonia will sail in, a conquering hero.’

‘Our understanding,’ Faunt countered, ‘is that they’re all rabid Puritans here, dyed-in-the-wool, watered-down Calvinists.’

‘
Your
understanding,’ Marlowe reminded him. ‘There are more things in Heaven and earth, Nicholas …’

‘Yes,’ the projectioner sighed. ‘I’d heard that too. Well, I must away, Kit. See what Phelippes makes of these letters. In the meantime, watch out for yourself, old lad. Oh, and one thing I was asked to ask you – this comes from the Queen herself, mind, so although I am charged to say you are under no obligation, you must understand that if you don’t do it, you may end up in the Tower …’

‘It sounds intriguing. What is it?’ Marlowe’s imagination, always fertile, swam with possibilities, some of which turned his stomach.

‘The Queen is at Placentia, near Leicester’s troops along the Tilbury marshes. She will soon have to make a speech to stir the country, or at least Leicester’s men in the field. There is no doubt that the Spaniards are coming, Kit, and it won’t do if she stumbles over her words. Do you think you could … well, could you run something up? No rush. But when you can …’

‘I’ll do my best, Nicholas. Blank verse?’ The poet raised an eyebrow.

‘Just a speech, Kit,’ Faunt said. ‘Nothing fancy. After all, she only has the body of a weak and feeble woman. I’ll send a messenger if we need it urgently. Well, goodbye. I will see you soon, I’m sure.’

He shook the man’s hand and clattered out along the boardwalk, towards his boat, not liking at all the sigh of the reeds and the way the clouds were building to the west.

Marlowe watched him go and turned over a thought that was frequently in his head. Did Nicholas Faunt see him as often as he saw Nicholas Faunt? Or, as he suspected, far more often than that?

William Edwards had painful feet but they were not hurting him anything like as much as his hand was hurting him. And that was as nothing compared to his wrist. He had written out what had seemed like hundreds of copies of Vaughan’s letter to the great and the good of the Wight and now he was having to deliver them, too. With his worn-out writing arm tucked inside his doublet to try and give him some ease he couldn’t ride, even if his masters had seen fit to provide a horse, which they hadn’t. With the newly renamed
Commander
blocking the exit of the river, Vaughan and Denny had delivery problems of their own. Edwards carried a canvas bag from his shoulder and delved awkwardly in it from time to time, shuffling papers around to find the right one for the right address. He sighed; the wages were adequate, the food was acceptable, the lodgings not at all uncomfortable, but William Edwards was thinking of changing his employment. Using his shoulder, he pushed open a gate and plodded up a puddle-pocked path to the front door of the house which was the next one on his list. He stepped in a pothole and fell sideways, too tired and too disadvantaged by his arm to break his fall. He rolled over and sat there, wet and fed up to the back teeth.

He drew in his legs at the plash of an approaching horse. The animal was pulled up in front of him but he couldn’t even bother to look up.

‘Will?’ A voice came from overhead. ‘Will Edwards? What are you doing here?’

Edwards looked up and saw a huge black horse looming over him and on his back a man he knew from around the town. James … James … he just couldn’t bring the man’s name to mind.

The horseman sprang down from the saddle and offered Edwards a hand. ‘It’s James,’ he said. ‘James Currier. You must remember me, I …’

It was all coming back to Edwards now. This man worked up at the castle. Hence the horse, he thought, sullenly. He hauled himself up using Currier’s weight as a counter. ‘Of course I remember you. The Crown.’

The man laughed. ‘Amongst others. But I have my orders. No ale or any spirits until I have all these delivered.’ He patted a bag slung across his chest. ‘There’s hundreds of the bloody things. Invites to this Masque thing they’re having. You wouldn’t believe the to-do.’ He peered round under Edwards’ arm. ‘You delivering too? Not more invites, surely?’

Edwards lied. ‘I dunno what they are,’ he said, although every word was engraved on his brain. ‘I just got told to go and hand them out.’

‘You hurt your arm?’ Currier asked.

Blasting him for a nosy coke, Edwards lied again. ‘Fell off the
Bowe
the other night. Knocked it on the way down.’

‘Talk at the castle is that old devil Sculpe drowned t’other night.’

Edwards shrugged. ‘So I hear. Well, I must get on. These letters won’t deliver themselves.’ He started plodding on up the path again.

‘Wait,’ Currier said. ‘I have a thought. You can’t ride because of your knock. I’m getting fair tired of upping and downing off this horse at every house. Why don’t you deliver my invitations in the town and I will do them in the country? Half the work, same result.’ He beamed into Edwards’ face. ‘What do you say?’

Edwards had more to lose than Currier did if things went wrong. His life, for one instance. Odds and ends of body parts if he was a little luckier, but his feet did hurt him and his arm was aching. He came to a decision. ‘All right. But don’t open any of these letters. They are private from Master Vaughan and if he finds out you know what’s in there …’

Currier didn’t need Edwards to fill in all the gory details. The rumour mill ground hot and strong up at the castle and what wasn’t known for sure, you could rely on Ester to embellish. He held up a hand. ‘As God is my witness,’ he said. ‘I won’t even peep around the seal.’

‘As long as I can trust you, Master Currier,’ Edwards said. ‘We will need to divide these up. Where can we go to do that?’

‘There must be an inn near here.’

‘I thought you couldn’t drink while you were delivering.’

‘Not while I am
delivering
. I can drink when I am
sorting
. Completely different job, sorting.’

Edwards sighed and agreed. He could probably spare the odd finger, or foot when he got found out. After all, all they did was ache, so why not risk it? The two men, one hobbling and the other leading a horse, wandered off in search of an inn.

Robert Dillington’s house at Knighton Gorges lay in the valley below the ridge where the Armada beacons stood ready against the sullen grey of the sky. The man had spent a fortune on it. The gardens were more intricate in their knots than any Marlowe had ever seen and peacocks strutted there, their azure necks bright even on a dull day like this one. They shivered their tails and displayed the feathers shimmering in green and gold like the Queen’s banners at Whitehall.

‘What news of Whitehall?’ The master of Knighton was checking his cherry trees as he walked with Marlowe in the orchard. The river tumbled and splashed its way over the rocks below them.

‘I know little of Whitehall, Sir Robert,’ Marlowe lied. ‘I am a poet, a playwright.’

‘Yes,’ Dillington said, extending the syllable into a sentence. ‘What of the Curtain, then? The Theatre?’

‘Alas,’ Marlowe smiled. ‘I am with the Rose at the moment.’

‘The Rose.’ Dillington rubbed his hands together. ‘Yes, of course. Henslowe’s Folly. South of the river. Does he keep a bear there? I have heard it said.’

‘He keeps a bear nearby, yes.’

‘And, tell me.’ Dillington checked under the trees to make sure they were alone. ‘The Winchester Geese, are they still … gaggling?’

Marlowe laughed. ‘I’ve never heard it called that before, Sir Robert,’ he said. ‘I think I am wasted here. Philip Henslowe could use you on the Spanish Tragedy.’

‘Ah, yes, the Spanish tragedy.’ Dillington’s face darkened. ‘We may yet be caught up in that. But the Geese.’ The Lord of Knighton was a persistent man. ‘Is it true they do it in the street? Bare themselves shamelessly?’ He was almost salivating.

‘You’d have to ask my stage manager, Tom Sledd,’ Marlowe said. He stopped walking. ‘Is that why you have asked me here, sir, to discuss the whiles of London whores?’

‘No, no,’ Dillington flustered. ‘Heaven forfend, no. It’s just that we don’t get many from the capital here, other than the people George Carey invites, of course. I myself have not been for a while. In fact, the last time I was there, there was a panic in the city. I was attending to a matter of law in the Inns of Court and we got the news of the massacre at Paris. Shocking. Quite shocking. Do you remember it?’

‘I was eight, sir,’ Marlowe told him. ‘At school in Canterbury.’

‘Oh, quite. Quite. Ah, here we are.’ He led Marlowe into a little dell with stone seats arranged in a circle around a fountain. ‘My inner sanctum. My chance to escape from the world.’ The look on Robert Dillington’s face earlier had made it clear that it was not so much the world he wanted to escape from but Matilda Dillington. Marlowe had met her briefly and understood the man’s point of view completely.

‘I understand,’ Dillington became conspiratorial, ‘that the Queen has freaks about her at court.’

‘Freaks?’

‘A female dwarf called Thomasina. A little black boy – but everyone’s got one of those these days, haven’t they? And Ippolita the Tartarian.’

‘I’m afraid to say I have never met the Queen,’ Marlowe said. ‘Or been to her court.’

‘That’s a pity.’ Dillington was deflated. ‘There’s talk of swearing, whoredom, carding, carousing, gluttony and so on.’

‘All good clean English vices, Sir Robert,’ Marlowe assured him.

‘Oh, quite, quite. So, the story of the monkey …?’

‘I was more intrigued by Island stories,’ Marlowe interrupted.

‘Really?’ Dillington crossed one gartered leg over the other and rested his elbow on one knee and his chin on his fist. ‘What, in particular? Not that I’m one to gossip, you understand.’

‘Of course not.’ Marlowe frowned. ‘Well, for instance, this wretched murder business.’

‘Murder? Oh, Lord, yes. You mean Matthew Compton.’

‘Among others.’

‘Others? Oh, Walter Hunnybun. That was the Urrys.’

‘It was?’

‘Oh, yes. Long-standing feud, Marlowe, long-standing. Those families were at each other’s throats in my grandfather’s day.’

‘I’m not sure it’s that simple,’ the playwright said.

‘Well, if it involves the Urrys, it must be. They don’t come much simpler.’

‘How well do you know Bet Carey?’ Marlowe asked.

The Lord of Knighton dropped his casual pose and sat up, tugging his doublet and running a hand over his sparse hair. ‘What do you mean?’ he asked.

‘Er … how well do you know Bet Carey?’ Marlowe repeated. As a poet he had a thousand ways to say it, but this one was by far the most direct.

‘Well,’ Dillington said, ‘not Biblically, I assure you. Though –’ he glanced towards the house before he spoke – ‘there are those who do.’

‘For instance?’

‘Well, my old friend Henry Meux, for one. But he hardly counts. They have been together, if I may put it politely, since they were hardly more than children. Hmm, Matthew Compton, of course … I’ve heard it said that even Walter Hunnyb— Oh my God!’ Realization had hit the Lord of Knighton Gorges. ‘You think Bet Carey is doing it? I’ve read of spiders that do that. And Doctor Percival of Oxford University has told me, in the strictest confidence, that it is not uncommon in the more remote parts of Cumberland, apparently.’