A Prisoner in Malta (33 page)

“I see.” Walsingham closed his eyes.

Marlowe opened his mouth to go on, thought better of it, and bit his lower lip. Instead, he paused and waited. Walsingham would speak eventually, and something would be revealed.

“You are
half
right about
some
things,” Walsingham confessed, wearily emphasizing the qualifying syllables.

“It is true to some minor extent,” Walsingham went on after a moment, “that we wanted to discover who killed Pygott, and that investigation also provided us with an opportunity to further test your capabilities, as you put it. And you did discover that the same man who would kill our Queen is the murderer you seek, which is very convenient.”

“And was it convenient as well that Dr. Lopez lost his life in the theatre of your testing?”

Marlowe knew, even as the words flew from his mouth, that he should not have spoken them.

Oddly, Walsingham seemed not to hear the question at all.

“But we must put all of this aside for the moment,” the spymaster said crisply, “and set to more important work immediately. If your intelligence is correct, this assassin, Carier, will attempt to murder Her Majesty within the next twenty-four hours, before she leaves Hampton Court. You will find him and stop him. You will attempt to report him to the authorities, without reference to the offices of the Queen if possible, simply as the true murderer of Walter Pygott. You have, I am told, evidence to that effect.”

“I—no, I—I have a button.”

Walsingham nodded once. “The fate of the nation has depended, many times, on less.”

“I have a
button
.”

“Use it to obtain a confession.” Walsingham said it as if it were simple, obvious.

Marlowe's mind drifted slightly. “I may also have an eyewitness, a priest in Cambridge.”

“Employ whatever methods you think best,” Walsingham snapped impatiently. “Here.”

He shoved several papers toward Marlowe.

“It's been arranged,” the old man went on, “that you will ally yourself with William Allen, the man in charge of the College of Douai at Rheims.”

“Allen? Yes.” Marlowe nodded, forcing himself to focus. “Carier will be with Allen, and the rest who would foment revolt from within our own country after they've killed the Queen.”

Walsingham nodded, his impatience growing. “Allen is here in London and has been told of your father's affiliation with the Catholic Church. He believes that you would work in the Catholic cause. We've arranged to have you meet with him tonight.”

Marlowe's head was swimming. “This is all—everything is happening quite quickly.”

“These events are in motion now.” Walsingham stood. “You have no time to digest the meal I've just forced down your gullet. You must be off without delay. These papers instruct you. They will tell you where to meet Allen, assure your safe passage to the man, and offer him evidence of your fealty to his cause.”

“Frances?”

Walsingham turned away, and a guard, who had been hidden all along, pulled back a tapestry revealing the door through which Marlowe had entered.

“My daughter has suspicions of her own,” Walsingham mumbled, striding toward the door, “things she has not told you. She is approaching Allen's main cohort, the Jesuit priest Robert Parsons, with a mad plan of her own design.”

With that, the old man was gone.

Marlowe stood alone in the room, and was suddenly cold.

*   *   *

The eastern wall of Fulham Palace blocked out the stars. Frances Walsingham leaned against it, smiling. She could hear voices inside through the open window next to her. She took a moment to adjust the dagger hidden in her boot and then rounded the corner toward the guarded door.

“Who's that?” one of the guards called out, jittery.

“I have a message for Robert Parsons,” Frances whispered loudly.

She moved toward the door with a display of subservience.

“What's the message?” the other guard asked.

“Pardon,” Frances squeaked, “I am to give it only to Robert Parsons.”

A voice from inside snapped, “What's all that, Groot?”

The first guard answered, “Some girl. Says she's got a message for you.”

“Send her away!” the voice commanded.

“It's from Bess Throckmorton, sir,” Frances called out. “Most urgent, she says.”

A moment of silence was followed by the sudden appearance of a cleric in the doorway.

“Keep your voice down!” he commanded. “Get inside.”

He stepped back and Frances entered. Down a short hall and to her right she found the man in a small dining room. Seven or eight men, two of them sitting at the large oak table, turned to look at her as she came in. The room was ablaze with candles, bright as day. Despite the soft spring night, there was a fire in the hearth. A stack of paper, a pen and inkwell, and a dozen or more muskets adorned the tabletop.

The man Frances had followed sat down at the head of the table and stared at her.

“Well?” he said, irritated.

“Are you Robert Parsons?” she asked, managing to sound frightened.

“Yes. God. What is your message?”

“I'm to say that Bess has been called back to Coughton by her father,” Frances began with a deliberately tentative air, “and that I am to take her place in the—in the business at hand.”

Every eye looked her way.

“Why has her father summoned her?”

“She told me that he feared for her safety in this enterprise, but she also apprised me of her mission. I stand ready to carry it out.”

Parsons licked his lips. “I see.”

One of the other men at the table leaned close to Parsons's ear and whispered. Parsons smiled.

Without a word his eyes flicked to the man nearest Frances. He took her by her arm and tugged hard.

“And I stand ready as well, Frances Walsingham,” Parsons sneered. “Your captivity shall provide further safety for our endeavor. Have a seat. You will compose a note to your father.”

With that Frances stomped her boot heel down and the man who held her howled in pain. Before he even let go of her arm, Frances had pulled her dagger and stabbed the man three times.

Ducking to the floor as the man fell, she slid under that table and threw her knife toward the head of the table, but Parsons had already shoved himself aside and stood.

Frances grabbed the foot of one of the other men at the table and pulled hard, toppling the man with a thud. She reached out and kicked him, turned him, and freed his rapier from its sheath.

Rolling, she emerged from the table just in time to stab at a man who held a pistol. The pistol went off, but only damaged the table.

She got to her feet and turned. Parsons and two others faced her from the other side of the table, each holding a musket.

“I don't want to kill you yet,” Parsons allowed, “because you're too useful to me alive. For the moment. So put down that rapier and pick up the pen. You're going to write a letter to your father.”

Frances turned her eyes to the man who had whispered to Parsons.

“This would have worked if you hadn't given me away,” she said to him.

“You are not a modest young woman,” the anonymous man responded, his accent vaguely French. “Anyone who has ever been to court would know you.”

“But not anyone at court would betray our Queen,” she said. “All it will mean to you tonight is that you'll be the first to die.”

With that she tossed the rapier backhanded and it flew through the air into the man's heart.

As she did it, she dropped once more to the floor, but not quickly enough to escape the musket blast that tore through her lovely blue dress.

*   *   *

Marlowe stood outside St. Etheldreda's Church, one of the oldest places of worship in the city. Publicly, of course, it was Church of England, but everyone knew that Catholic masses were offered there in secret nearly every week. Only a few years earlier it had been leased to Sir Christopher Hatton, said to be one of the Queen's bed partners. The rent was £10, ten loads of hay, and one red rose per year—a fee so little that it only increased the gossip about Her Majesty and Sir Christopher. It didn't help matters that Hatton used the crypt as a tavern. It was in that tavern that Marlowe was to meet William Allen.

The sky was dark and the moon was dim. It was only nine o'clock, but the air had midnight in it. Marlowe felt for the dagger hidden at his side, and the second one in his boot. The rapier was deliberately obvious.

Despite hard weeks, little food, and less sleep, Marlowe felt the intense thrill of being alive. He knew that he was perched on the precipice of history, and that he would soon be the Queen's salvation. Or he would be dead.

The street outside the crypt tavern was narrow and strangely curved. While the moon's light illuminated the stones around him, though barely, Marlowe could not see the moon itself. He took a moment to consider what sort of metaphor that might be—that he could only see the effect of the light, not the source—but that poetical exercise was interrupted. Someone came at him silently and held a blade at his back.

“If you turn around,” the man behind Marlowe rasped, “I'll stick this through your ribs. It's a long blade. It'll come out the other side.”

“Fair enough,” Marlowe answered amiably, “and what will you do if I don't turn around?”

“I'll ask you several questions,” the man replied.

Marlowe nodded. “I like a good game, but let's make it more interesting. For every question I answer correctly, I get to cut off one of your fingers. We'll keep the stakes small, I'll start with the littlest.”

“What?” the man snapped.

Without warning Marlowe grabbed the hilt of his rapier and tipped it, neatly forcing the man to stumble backward. That done Marlowe twirled, almost dancing, and in a flash the point of his own rapier was touching the other man's gullet.

“Now then,” Marlowe said lazily, “ask your first question.”

The man gaped, still holding his dagger, mouth open, eyes wide.

“I'll tell you what,” Marlowe continued, “I'll give you the first question for free—but the bet still stands.”

The man licked his lips, trying not to move too much. The point of Marlowe's rapier tickled a small nick of blood from his Adam's apple.

“Ask,” Marlowe demanded.

The man sucked in a breath. His face was obscured by a cowl. Perhaps he was a monk, impossible to tell. He wore a plain black robe under an unadorned black cape attached to the cowl. The knife was interesting. It was made of silver, more a work of art than a weapon.

The man managed his first words in full voice, despite obvious trepidation: “The moon shines bright in such a night as this, does it not?”

It was one of the questions that Walsingham's notes had told him to expect. He offered the countersign.

“In such a night did Thisbe fearfully trip the dew,” Marlowe answered.

The man nodded, relieved, and went on. “In such a night stood Dido with a willow in her hand.”

Marlowe smiled. “And in such a night Media gathered the enchanted herbs, are we done?”

“I heartily beg your pardon,” the man said, swallowing. “You understand I have orders.”

“But do you understand that these words we've just spoken are an allusion to the Easter Mass, only thinly veiled?”

The man blinked. “They are?”

“What manner of Catholic are you,” Marlowe growled, “that you don't recognize that? The moonlight, the suggestion of music, the repeated use of the phrase ‘in such a night'?”

“Please,” the man coughed, “let's just go in.”

Marlowe hesitated, but sheathed his rapier. The man, as an afterthought, put away his knife and moved past Marlowe, headed for a small alleyway.

“I detest these stupid codes,” Marlowe complained. “Some idiot half as clever as he thinks has devised a secret language twice as complicated as it needs to be.”

“I don't know what it means,” the man answered. “I just say the words.”

“Spoken like a true Catholic,” Marlowe mumbled.

“What's that?” the man said, cupping his ear but not bothering to turn around.

“I hope there's ale,” Marlowe answered loudly.

“Aye,” the man said, granting himself a single chuckle. “Where there's men of God, I always find good drink.”

The man turned into an open doorway, waved to someone, and stood aside.

Marlowe stepped in. He found himself at the top of a short staircase staring into an ancient burial arena. Torches did their best to illuminate the place, but a palpable air of gloom and decay could not be so easily overcome. The gray stones seemed to absorb sound rather than echo it, and it was quiet as the grave.

The crypt had been left as it had always been, without an iota of adornment. Only tables and chairs had been added. It seemed an appropriate place for a meeting between men who might, at any moment, be dead.

“That's him,” the man told Marlowe, nodding in the direction of a man in inky blue robes.

The first thing Marlowe noticed about William Allen was that his beard was divided. Beginning at his chin, it grew in two separate and distinct directions. Though Allen had the eyes of a doe, he had the beard of a satyr.

That assessment made Marlowe smile as he descended the stairs into the dank tavern.

Several men sat around tables. There were no women in the place so far as Marlowe could tell. A plank set on several up-ended barrels served as a bar. Tall barrel racks made walls against the darker inner reaches of the crypt. No one looked at Marlowe as he strode toward Allen, not even Allen himself. But out of the corner of his eye Marlowe observed several shadows behind one of the barrel racks, and one of the men at one of the tables had a cocked pistol on his lap.

Marlowe came to Allen's table and sat without being asked. He took hold of the jug next to Allen's cup and pulled it toward him. Eyes on Allen, who had still not looked up, Marlowe raised the jug to his lips and drank.