Traitor's Storm (3 page)

The inn had not been of the best, but the bed had been reasonably soft and at least Marlowe had had it to himself. Walsingham’s purse strings were not loose, but they did allow enough money out to ensure a reasonable degree of comfort. Marlowe had never been to this part of the south coast before and he couldn’t help feeling that he had gone rather out of his way. For a harbour, the Hamble kept itself very much to itself and Marlowe suddenly found himself at the head of a little street of houses, all leaning on each other in what looked like a slowly failing attempt to keep themselves out of the river. Moss was growing over the steps and up the wall and some of the buildings seemed more part of the river bank than the land. He would not have been at all surprised to see a giant water vole drinking smoke from a pipe at the doorway of the most decrepit. But it was a man, dressed all in drab and with a low cap pulled down over his eyes. His beard seemed to join the cap and his chest. As the only living thing in sight other than himself and his horse, Marlowe had little option but to speak.

‘Hey, there,’ he called. ‘Is this the Hamble?’

The man didn’t stir, but his little eyes glinted, swivelling from side to side in the shadow of his cap. ‘Ar.’

Marlowe dismounted and went a step closer, slipping only once on the slimy green pavement. ‘I was to be met here,’ he ventured. He was usually rather more circumspect, but he didn’t see how this creature would be likely to be a danger. He looked as though he might be actually growing into the low stool he sat on.

‘Oh ar?’ Again there was no movement, except from the piggy eyes.

‘I need to get over to the Wight.’

The man finally took his pipe from his mouth and looked out to sea in a vague fashion. ‘Ver the Woight, I wunt start from yere at’all. I’d start from Portsea, I shud. Oh, yes, Portsea, that’s where you wants to be, Master.’

‘I was told I could get a ship here.’ Marlowe was beginning to think that he should have listened to Tom Sledd and stayed in London.

One bright eye closed and the other one surveyed the few little rackety boats pulled up on the river mud. ‘Ship? No ships yere, Master. Just our little boats, poor things as they be. Just a bit o’ fishin’ we do yere. Oh, yes. Just a bit of fishin’.’

Marlowe wound the reins round his hand to stop him winding his hands around the idiot’s throat. He had been brought up within salt smell of the sea, but his had mainly been an inland life. He hated sailors and all who sailed with them, for all his mother hailed from Dover. ‘A boat, then. I was told I could get a boat to the Wight.’

Again the eye roamed up the river and back again. ‘Not at this tide, Master. Perhaps this evening there’ll be somebody’ll take you.’

‘In the dark?’ Marlowe asked. He had had enough of boats and the dark. He preferred to know where he was going, even if it was to the bottom.

‘I shud say, s’arternoon. It’s low tide now, see. High tide in about six hours.’ The eye now looked at him. ‘That’s how it works, see. Tides. Low tides, high tides, twelve hours apart or near as makes n’difference. I would have thought you would have known that, Master Marlowe. Canterbury isn’t so far from the sea and you’ve lived on a tidal river this eighteen months since.’

Marlowe looked sharply at the man, who looked scarcely any different from before. But both eyes were looking at him now and an intelligent look was in them. ‘I didn’t know …’

‘Well, no, you obviously didn’t. I have spent years building my reputation here, Master Marlowe. Looking the other way as the villagers smuggle all night and sleep all day. I am, in a manner of speaking, the village idiot. Daft Harry is my name, but you can call me Daft.’

‘Daft Harry what?’ Marlowe had been caught on the back foot and wanted to be able to sound intelligent when he saw Faunt next.

‘Just Daft Harry, I think, Master Marlowe. You seem a little too lax to receive too much information. I was told to expect one of Sir Francis’ best men.’ The brown mound shook with a chuckle. ‘I wonder when he will get here?’

Marlowe sighed and sat down on the low wall opposite the cottage door. It felt a little slimy and something skittered out from under his thigh, but he didn’t really care. He had a feeling that he was going to undergo far worse at the hands of this self-trained salty sea dog. ‘Are you going to take me across?’ he said.

‘Ooh, tha’s a rum un,’ came a voice from behind him. ‘Daft Harry take you out on a boat? You’d need to be as mad as him to do that, I’m reckoning.’

Marlowe twisted round and looked over a wall. The beach was about six feet below and sitting on an upturned lobster pot there was a man wearing a stocking cap and an oiled jerkin. He was mending a net, but not very well as far as Marlowe could tell. There seemed to be a lot more mend than hole. ‘And you are?’ he asked, wondering how much he had heard.

‘Gabriell,’ the man said, ‘Gabriell’s the name.’

‘Gabriell what?’ Marlowe asked, feeling as though he had arrived in the middle of a game to which he didn’t know all of the rules.

‘Gabriell. Gabriel Gabriell.’ The man gave a throaty laugh, coughed and spat on the weedy stones. ‘My old mum, she’d just straight run out o’ names when I come along.’

‘You have a lot of brothers, Master Gabriell?’ Marlowe asked politely. As far as he could see, high tide was at least five hours off and he may as well be civil while he killed time.

‘No,’ said the sailor, closing his mouth with a snap. ‘Just me. Poor old mum. Ar.’ He lapsed into a nostalgic silence and Marlowe straightened up, assuming the conversation was over.

‘But if you’m be wanting to go over t’t’Wight, I can take you. I got a fair little boat down on the shore.’

Marlowe looked at Daft Harry, who lifted a shoulder and gave a small nod.

‘Don’t ask him,’ came the voice from below. ‘If that’s Daft Harry you’m talking to, he don’t know his arse from a hole in the ground.’

‘Aaaarrr,’ Daft Harry shouted, shrugging again at Marlowe and winking.

‘Is your boat far?’ Marlowe asked, trying to get the conversation back on an even keel.

‘Just down to the shore. A matter of ten minutes’ walk if you can shake your stumps.’

‘Is there anywhere I can leave my horse?’ Marlowe asked. In his head, he added
where you won’t eat it.

‘Up at t’big house,’ Gabriell said. ‘You can’t miss it. Go up t’road where you came in. Turn t’other way from where you came and about half a mile along, there she’ll be. The groom there will take your mare in for ye. She’ll be safe enough along there ’til you come back. Old Lady Dunton, she lives there. Soft for horses, she is.’

‘And when I come back, we can go down to your boat? Get across to the Wight?’ Marlowe was beginning to feel as though he may have wandered into one of John Dee’s secret worlds of faerie. Everyone was as mad here as a March hare and that month had gone.

‘For sure, Master. That we shall.’

Marlowe got up from the wall, trailing green slime for just a second before it gave up its grip on his breeches. He glanced again at Daft Harry, who nodded and winked again, sprang up on to his horse and was gone up the lane.

The Hamble returned to its silence, the grey sea mist lying at the mouth of the river like a curse, the quiet lapping of the turning tide making the boats boom as they rocked and tapped against each other. Daft Harry sat there in his doorway, sucking his pipe and occasionally giving vent to a random whoop. He liked to stay in character, even with no one to see. Gabriel Gabriell carried on mending his net, biding his time.

Marlowe had made his turn and was almost at the big house before something struck him like a thunderbolt.

H
ow did Gabriel Gabriell know which way he had come? The question racketed around in Marlowe’s head half the way to the big house and all the way back. He left his mare in the care of a groom no worse than many he had known and a good deal better than some insofar as he seemed to know which end of a horse was which. As he walked the short distance back to the riverbank, the question started to shout in his ear and so by the time he got back within earshot of Harry’s mad oscillating screams and Gabriel Gabriell’s idiot grin, he was in no mood to discuss matters.

He had his hand on the hilt of his dagger as he stepped over the slippery cobbles of the last few paces. Gabriell was sitting on the wall, a bag thrown carelessly over his shoulder. Daft Harry was peering into his pipe, a mournful expression on his face. He looked up at Marlowe’s approach.

‘Pipe’s out,’ he said. ‘No smoke.’

‘There is indeed no smoke without fire,’ Marlowe said shortly. He looked at Gabriell. ‘Are we away, Master Gabriell?’

The sailor got up and flexed his knees. ‘As ready as we’ll ever be,’ he said and turned to face downstream.

‘Have you got a light for my pipe?’ Daft Harry said, beckoning to Marlowe. The playwright looked at him for a long minute. The idiot was winking and grimacing wildly, tossing his head and one shoulder towards Gabriell’s back. Marlowe decided not to help him.

‘No.’ He turned his back on him and followed the sailor’s rolling gait.

‘But …’ Daft Harry dropped out of character momentarily and Gabriell spun round. ‘Oh, sir, master,’ he whined, quickly reverting. ‘Surely, for a poor …’

Marlowe waved a hand. ‘Sorry,’ he called, using his best projection, learned at the knee of the great Ned Sledd himself, ‘I don’t drink smoke. I have no tinder.’

‘Suit yourself,’ the intelligencer muttered. ‘When you’re drowned, don’t come whining to me.’ Aloud, he added, ‘Take care, then, masters all,’ and slumped back on to his stool. It might be years before another of Sir Francis’ men came by but while he waited, it wasn’t such a bad life. He got three hot meals a day from the ladies of the parish and as many hot ladies of the parish a night as he could manage. Lady Dunton looked kindly on him too. With the men away all night fishing, an idiot who had the brains and other attributes of a donkey could do quite well. He gave a little chuckle and watched the retreating playwright almost fondly.

Down at the beach, Gabriell gestured to his boat, pulled up on the sand. It looked very small, but then the journey wasn’t long.

‘How far is it to the Wight?’ he asked Gabriell.

The sailor narrowed his eyes and looked out into the widening of the River Itchen, which in turn led out to the Solent. He licked a finger and held it up and then kicked a clump of brownish, leathery seaweed. Finally he turned to Marlowe and said, ‘I have absolutely no idea. I rather hoped you might know.’

Marlowe’s dagger was at the man’s throat before another wave lapped the shore. ‘Who in hell are you?’ he said. ‘As if it’s not bad enough having to deal with an idiot far too convincing for his own good, now I have a sailor who doesn’t know his rowlocks from his arse.’

Gabriell eased his head back a fraction but the blade went with him. ‘Idiot? What idiot?’

‘Daft Harry. Do you have more than one idiot in your village?’

Gabriell held Marlowe’s wrist steady while he swallowed. ‘Daft Harry? No, he’s just the village idiot. We only have the one.’

Marlowe gathered up a handful of Gabriell’s jerkin and lifted him a little off his feet so he had to balance on tiptoe to stop the blade pricking under his chin. ‘Daft Harry is an agent of Sir Francis. As, I assume, are you, although I find it hard to credit.’

‘I am, as a matter of fact, but just as well, old chap, eh, or we would all be a bit in the soup. Are you usually this indiscreet?’ Gabriell was chancing his arm to speak like this to someone with a knife at his throat, but he had been told a lot about Marlowe and thought he could tell whether a man was a homicidal maniac or not. And this man seemed not.

Marlowe let him go suddenly and he fell into the fine sand at his feet. He felt a warm trickle on his neck and wiped it. He looked in horror at the back of his hand – he had cut him. The man had actually cut him. He felt quite ill suddenly and put his head between his knees.

‘I don’t mind being indiscreet with men I am about to skewer,’ Marlowe said, ‘but I fancy you might know more about this business than I do, so I am prepared to let you live long enough to tell me what’s going on.’

‘I don’t know that much,’ Gabriell whined. ‘I didn’t know about Daft Harry, to name just one part of my ignorance.’ He looked up, shielding his eyes from the weak sun which was struggling out through the clouds. ‘Are you certain about him?’

Marlowe inclined his head and wiped the tip of his blade on Gabriell’s shoulder before slipping it back into the sheath at his back.

‘I get a letter once a week from Nicholas Faunt. I don’t know who brings it. It is here, in my boat, every Monday at dawn. The Wight has always been somewhere they keep their eyes on. With the Back of the Wight facing France, if there aren’t spies landing, then there’s brandy. You can’t afford to take your eyes off them for a minute.’

‘And yet, here you are,’ Marlowe said sardonically, ‘up the Itchen without, it seems, a paddle.’

‘My boat is ready to take to the water,’ Gabriell said huffily. ‘I could be landing on the Wight in, ooh …’

Marlowe kicked the boat dismissively. ‘Can you sail this?’ he asked.

Gabriell looked him up and down. ‘I hope you don’t think that I lied to Master Faunt,’ he said. ‘He placed me here as a sailor, and sailor I am.’

Marlowe narrowed his eyes and felt again for the dagger in the small of his back.

Gabriell shook his head. ‘No, no, I am afraid I don’t know how to sail this boat,’ he said, scrabbling backwards in the sand. ‘But,’ he rolled over on to his hands and knees and got up, ‘I
do
know about what is going on in the Wight. I commit every letter to memory each week and then burn it. I remember them all. What would you like to know?’

Marlowe had a finely developed sense of his own well-being and had no intention of getting into a boat with this man, but on the other hand he did need to know as much as could be gleaned about the situation over the water. He took a step forward, matched by one of Gabriell’s going back.

‘Stand still, Master Gabriell. I won’t prick you again, you can be sure. But we must find someone here to sail us across to the Wight. Surely, not
everyone
in your village works for Sir Francis. Think, man.’