Her Last Assassin (32 page)

‘Forget Marlowe,’ Essex had told him sharply. ‘His activities are none of your concern.’

This in itself had made Goodluck suspicious, for while he trusted Lord Essex to guard the Queen against traitors, he did not consider the earl to be as cunning a man as his predecessor Walsingham, nor as able to steer a daring course through the devious machinations of his own spies.

So he had ignored his master’s injunction to leave well alone. Although it had been difficult to explain his decision to Lucy, Goodluck had immediately quit the court at Richmond and tracked Marlowe down to the house of Sir Thomas Walsingham, cousin to Sir Francis, who was the playwright’s patron. There he had waited under the trees just out of sight of the great house at Chislehurst, pacing and watching the lit windows where he could see Marlowe working by candlelight in an upper room. Early the next morning, just as dawn was beginning to lighten the dark country lanes, he had stirred awake at the sound of hoofbeats, and risen to see Marlowe riding away from the house.

Goodluck had grabbed his pack and clambered on to his horse, turning the animal’s reluctant head to follow. Whatever Essex might insist, he knew that the young playwright was somehow linked to this traitor in the Queen’s household, and that he must find out more.

And now he stood closer to the truth than ever. He negotiated a dark corridor in Widow Bull’s house and came out into a cramped, smoky room where several men in good attire lounged at their ease, drinking and smoking as they played a game of dice. One of them, a man with a narrow, whiskered chin and small bright eyes like a weasel, was exclaiming over some poor roll of the dice, though he fell silent when he saw Goodluck, as though afraid he would report them for gambling. A thin-ribbed grey wolfhound was sprawled before the fire which lit the room. This mangy animal raised its head curiously as he paused on the threshold, then lay down again with a sigh, satisfied that he was no threat. The other men glanced up too, but seemed to lose interest when they saw his poor clothes and dusty boots.

Goodluck entered the room, and at once a sharp-eyed woman sprang out of the shadows to block his way. Her arms were folded across an expensive lacy bodice, broad skirts brushing the rushes, an apron tied about her waist. Her dark hair was streaked with grey, barely concealed by the fine widow’s cap strapped under her chin.

‘And who might you be?’ she demanded, looking him up and down.

This must be the widow Bull, he thought, and was instantly on his guard, for his senses told him something was wrong here. This hostess was too genteel for such a house, and too much on edge.

Was this some kind of trap? And if so, for whom was it intended?

‘A very good morning to you, mistress,’ he replied, still using the local accent. He bowed his head, removing his cap as a mark of respect. ‘My name is Master Goodcheer, and I was wondering if I could buy a cup of ale from you. I’ve heard there’s not a finer drop of ale to be had in the whole of Deptford. Nor such a comely hostess.’

‘This is a private house,’ Mistress Bull told him, still barring his way. Her face was cold. ‘Those who drink here do so by invitation only. There is an alehouse three doors along, the Golden Boar. Be on your way.’

‘One cup,’ Goodluck promised her, smiling. ‘Have pity on a thirsty man, mistress.’

‘Are you deaf, fellow? I have said you cannot drink here.’ Her gaze dropped to his boots in disgust. ‘Especially not in those dirty boots.’

‘What, you cannot offer me even a small cup of ale? I have told you I can pay.’ He looked at her steadily and, although he spoke quietly enough, allowed a suggestion of threat to enter his voice. ‘Why, mistress, any man would think you had something to hide.’

Her gaze narrowed angrily on his face. She had just drawn breath, as though to call for assistance in removing him, when there was some commotion at the back door where Goodluck had just entered. Footsteps. Raised voices. One of them was familiar to him and he tensed, listening. Surely that was …?

Mistress Bull had heard the newcomers too. She made an impatient noise under her breath and pushed past him.

‘Sit down in the corner and wait,’ she snapped over her shoulder. ‘I will be back with your ale, by and by. Then you must leave.’

Goodluck settled in the wooden corner seat, only too glad to be in the shadows, away from the firelight and the other men, whose curious glances had turned to the doorway now.

Replacing his cap on his head, Goodluck drew it hurriedly down to shade the upper part of his face, then turned up his jacket collar to shield the rest. He crossed one booted foot over his knee to conceal his body, then slumped in his seat like a drunkard, resting his cheek wearily on his hand. He was glad now that his beard had sprouted grey in places, for in this shadowy corner he might be mistaken for an old man, not worth a second glance.

The first man who entered looked about cautiously, then spotted the men playing dice and nodded in greeting to the weasel-like man. ‘Ingram, how do you do?’

Robert Pooley, another of Walsingham’s former agents. Not a man to be trusted, he was more a master of disguise than Goodluck himself, and with fewer scruples. It had once been said of Pooley that he would slit a whore’s throat after using her rather than pay his shot. Certainly if he served any master, it was gold. Not England, nor the Queen, nor any of her nobles, unless they paid him for his loyalty.

The weasel-faced man at the table had stood up and shaken Pooley’s hand, introducing him to the others so softly that Goodluck could hear nothing. But when a second man entered, younger than Pooley, a man with golden hair that curled to his shoulder like a girl’s, this fellow shook hands with the man standing, then introduced himself to the seated dice players as ‘Master Nicholas Skeres, at your service,’ not bothering to lower his voice.

Goodluck showed no reaction to that name, but his heart had leapt. Nicholas Skeres. Named as one of the Babington conspirators, he had never been brought to trial. Now it was clear why not. Because he had been in Walsingham’s pay all along.

And now Skeres was one of Essex’s men, no doubt.

He felt a cold sweat break out on his palms and tried to remain calm. But it seemed to Goodluck that he had stumbled across a secret meeting in Mistress Bull’s house. A meeting of spies to which he himself had not been invited. But to what purpose had it been called? Were all these men double agents in Spanish pay, or had Goodluck been excluded from his master’s directives as no longer trustworthy?

Either way, it would almost certainly cost him his life if his identity was discovered.

Pooley looked in Goodluck’s direction at that moment, his face sharp with suspicion. But suddenly Mistress Bull was there, chivvying the men from the room like children.

‘I have set your table upstairs, Master Frizer,’ she told the dice player briskly, ‘with drinks and vittals as you requested.’

So the weasel-faced man was named Ingram Frizer – an unusual name, even for Kent. Goodluck thought he recognized the name, but could not place where he had heard it before. From another spy, perhaps?

Pooley asked the widow a question,
sotto voce
, and she shook her head. ‘Don’t fret now, Master Pooley, your friend is already up there, awaiting you. The room is very private, just as you desired, and no one will disturb you. There you may spend the whole day if you wish, or wander the gardens after lunch, for I keep a small garden and orchard here for the pleasure of my guests.’

Pooley paused in the doorway. He put a hand on her arm, his head bent, speaking to her again in his quiet voice.

Mistress Bull glanced across at Goodluck in surprise, then muttered something like ‘Not staying long,’ as she gestured him towards the stairs.

The three men – Robert Pooley, Nicholas Skeres and Ingram Frizer – ascended the stairs to where, Goodluck had to assume, Kit Marlowe was already waiting for them. He listened hard, but heard only scuffling feet and deep echoing voices as the men above greeted each other, then the whining scrape of a table being moved – away from the open window? – and after that, nothing but a faint rumble of voices as the men began to talk among themselves.

True to her word, the widow Bull brought him a small cup of ale a few minutes later, setting it before him so hard the ale sloshed out.

‘Drink that and be on your way,’ she told him, her voice hard as flint. ‘And don’t waste your breath asking for food. I’ll have no filthy dockmen at my table.’

‘I thank you, mistress,’ he murmured ironically, and gave a grimace as he tasted the ale, which was so sour on his lips, he had to wonder what foul substance had been added to speed him on his way. ‘A fine beverage, indeed.’

Mistress Bull looked him up and down in undisguised disgust, then swept away to take fresh orders from the dice players.

Glancing up at the uneven ceiling, Goodluck watched their comings and goings keenly, though he could see them only as mere shadows passing across gaps in the floorboards. One man left the table, walked to the window – to check they were not being observed, or perhaps to give a signal? – then returned to his place. Another rose to fetch something from his bag, and the others fell silent as though waiting while it was spread across the table. A large document, perhaps, or a map. Sometimes he heard a word or two of their discussion, and an occasional burst of laughter. But always their voices would drop frustratingly to whispers afterwards.

‘Essex’, he caught several times, and once ‘Spain’.

Suddenly there came the crash of a chair falling backwards, then an angry shout from Marlowe – the playwright’s voice clear and unmistakable, trained as it was to carry to the back of a crowded theatre – exclaiming hotly, ‘No, that’s not true! Who dares call me a traitor?’

One of the others hushed him, and another said loudly, ‘Don’t be a fool, Marlowe. Sit down!’

The chair was righted, and the shadows stilled above his head.

After that, the men in the upper room fell to muttering, their voices inaudible to Goodluck over the crackling of the fire.

Mistress Bull came to remove his unfinished cup of ale after half an hour, and showed him the door when he asked for another, her expression as sour as her ale.

‘Out, fellow,’ she said shortly, pushing him down the steps. ‘And do not come back unless you want a beating from one of my potmen.’

It was bright outside, the hour coming close to noon by the height of the sun. The old man who had been smoking on the steps before had vanished, the dusty lane now empty and sunlit. The greenish-brown spikes of salt rushes and marsh-grass grew among the tall grasses in the verge, suggesting that the place was prone to flooding from the nearby Thames. As Goodluck spat the sourness of the widow’s ale out into the dust, a large green-backed toad crossed his path, hopping away into the shade of the undergrowth with an ironic croak.

Goodluck adjusted his cap, taking this opportunity to glance up without being too obvious about it. The window of the room above was open and unshuttered, but he could not hear any of the conversation within.

Robert Pooley was deep into every Catholic conspiracy, often playing a double part while ostensibly working for the Queen. But on whose side was he this time? Ingram Frizer he did not know, but the man had the cold look of a killer. And Nicholas Skeres was another of the earl’s men, involved like Goodluck and Pooley in the uncovering of the Babington plot.

Their meeting had to be connected to this traitor in the Queen’s household. Essex had suggested at first that it was Lopez, one of the Queen’s doctors, but she had refused to believe it, and indeed Goodluck himself found the foreigner Lopez too convenient a hook on which to hang this conspiracy.

But if not Lopez, then who?

Marlowe must know the truth. He was at the heart of all this. He had spoken secretly of an attack on the Queen to that man in the kitchens – a man Goodluck had never seen about the palace since – and seemed to know more than anyone else of this latest plot. Yet the Earl of Essex had refused to hear of Kit Marlowe’s guilt. Another Cambridge man, no doubt blinded by the playwright’s charm and talent. Or else in alliance with him.

‘No!’ he exclaimed aloud, suddenly sickened by his own dreadful thoughts and suspicions.

It was unthinkable that a nobleman of Essex’s rank and stature, so close to the Queen, could be secretly plotting her death while pretending to be her protector. And to what avail? Surely Essex stood to gain more by keeping Queen Elizabeth alive, if only while he was still in her royal favour. Unless he hoped she would name him as her heir.

Goodluck walked a little way down the lane until he came to where it petered out into dockyards and rough-hewn quays, a sudden breeze hitting him as he came out beyond the last buildings to find the vast greyish river rolling mightily past, dark at its heart, its skin shivering and flecked with rough white wherever the wind caught it. The other bank was too far away to be anything but a shimmering haze, with the dark specks of boats bobbing by the shore.

It seemed to Goodluck that he had spent most of his life working with Walsingham to avoid the Queen’s assassination, lurching from one potential disaster to another and somehow averting them at the very last moment. Nothing had ever been terribly clear about this spying business, except that the Queen’s safety was worth the lives of many good men. But now Walsingham was dead, and Goodluck himself was lost in a mist of lies and confusion, fumbling about in darkness while the truth danced just out of his reach. He was like a blindfolded man searching for the centre of a maze, all the while suspecting that it had none and yet unable to give up the hunt.

The wind blowing off the river was chilly, and he shivered. He had told Lucy he would leave spying and take her away from court, that he was ready for a new life in the country as a respectable married man. And it was true, he loved Lucy, and could no longer bear sleeping under hedges and waiting about in cold places to force another man to admit treachery. Yet if the Queen’s death was the cost of his freedom, could he still live with his conscience after he had walked away from her service?