Her Last Assassin (7 page)

‘Lucy?’

He stared, momentarily confused by her appearance. It was indeed Lucy Morgan, though how and why he did not know. Then he saw Jensen’s heavily cloaked figure behind her, the barge woman’s brow threaded with sweat in the sunshine, and understood.

Lucy’s hands were on her hips, her full lips pursed in disapproval as she looked down on him. Even in that poor gown she looked regal, he thought, straight-backed yet somehow elegant, a dancer’s grace in the way she held herself. And for a thoughtless second, he forgot his mission and was overjoyed to see her again. It had been too long. And as always, Lucy seemed more alive than everyone else, her dark eyes sparking with emotion, her tight-curled hair spilling out from under the neat white cap, a strange humming vibrancy in the very air about her.

Then Goodluck recalled himself. He did not want Lucy to meet Kit Marlowe. It had been one thing to bring her up around the likes of Ned and Sos, and even that foul traitor Twist. But this was different. Those days were gone and life was colder here on the edge, the old ways almost vanished and nothing new in sight.

This was no place for his ward. He wanted Lucy to go home, to remain free of this dangerous, wearying net he had woven about himself.

Then their eyes met and his fatigue fell away.

‘What happened to your beard?’ she asked directly, staring.

‘It’s a long story.’

He hesitated, thrown off balance by her sudden presence. Two worlds had collided. He struggled for something to say, to distract her, belatedly remembering to sound drunk.

‘I can’t believe you’re here,’ he said uneasily. ‘Did Jensen hunt you down at the Palace of Whitehall?’

‘No, I was at your house in Cheapside.’

‘How so?’

‘It’s a long story,’ she repeated his own words back to him, then smiled slowly. ‘Catch me!’

He caught Lucy in his arms as she jumped down on to the barge, and smiled when she rested her hands on his shoulders, kissing his cheek in welcome.

Marlowe was staring at Lucy in frank admiration. An introduction could not be avoided without arousing suspicion that he was trying to hide something. Or in this case, someone.

Goodluck did not want these two involved.

‘Kit, this is my ward, Lucy Morgan.’ He hesitated, thinking back over the implications of what he had just said. Then added, ‘Though too old now to be under my charge.’

‘It seems you must be under mine today,’ she said pointedly. She too had taken a step back, though their hands were still touching. Just the fingertips. ‘You stink of ale.’

‘Forgive me. I …’

He tailed off, seeing how she had looked sideways at Marlowe, an odd expression on her face.

She nodded to the young man. ‘Master Marlowe.’

‘Mistress Morgan.’

Kit scrambled to his feet, managing a sketchy bow. The pallor of his face was less marked now, and although he swayed where he stood, he too no longer seemed as drunk.

‘You already know each other?’

‘Indeed we do,’ Marlowe said, coolly enough for a man in his cups. He looked at Lucy with sharp, clever eyes that seemed to see so much and which Goodluck would gladly pluck out if Marlowe did not keep his hands to himself. The rumour went that Kit Marlowe preferred boys to girls, but Goodluck was taking no chances with a fellow spy. Not this time. ‘Let me see, the last time we met was at the playhouse. How is Shakespeare? Still smoothing his beard with Master Burbage’s oil?’

Lucy glanced at Goodluck. ‘I do not know. That is … Master Shakespeare was well when I saw him last.’

‘Which was when, exactly?’ Goodluck growled, releasing her hands.

Her dark gaze fell before his, a sure sign of her guilt. Had she been wanton with Shakespeare again in his absence?

He surprised a desire in himself to kill that arrogant young man who had seduced his ward, left her pregnant, then failed to marry her because he was already married. Was she a simpleton, that she must continue to love a man who had brought her once already to the edge of ruin?

‘But an hour ago,’ she admitted. ‘We walked out to Finsbury Fields together. There was no harm in it.’

‘Is his wife dead?’ Goodluck demanded.

She looked shocked, then shook her head.

‘Then there is harm in it.’ He climbed up the ladder on to the quayside, clasping Jensen’s hand in farewell. ‘Jensen, I must thank you again for your hospitality.’

The barge woman grunted something, then looked sharply at young Marlowe until he too ascended the ladder. ‘Farewell then, masters,’ she muttered, and climbed down on to her barge with the agility of a cat, dragging the rope away as she did so, so that soon the barge was adrift on the low ebb of the current and heading sluggishly down towards the bridge.

‘What an odd creature,’ Kit remarked, watching her go. He slapped Goodluck on the shoulder. ‘It’s been good drinking with you. Let’s do it again some evening, when I shall hope to wheedle more secrets out of you than you were willing to give this time. Now you must forgive me, but I have an appointment to keep with a tankard of ale.’

He bowed again to Lucy, this time with more of a drunken swagger, as though he had only just recalled that he had been drinking all night and day. ‘Fare you well, friends.’

Lucy looked at Goodluck once Marlowe had disappeared. There was an accusation in her face which he chose to ignore. ‘Where have you been all these months?’

He took her hand and dragged her up the street after him, following Marlowe as covertly as he could with a woman in tow.

‘What, did you think I must be dead?’ he demanded, unable to contain his frustration any longer. ‘No wonder you took up so readily with William Shakespeare again.’

‘You think it has been easy for me to meet with him when I know he is married?’ Her eyes glittered angrily. ‘All London has been in an uproar this summer, with tales of Spaniards landing in the night, setting fire to our houses and slitting our throats. You were not here and had left no word of your whereabouts. You could have been dead for all I knew. There was some comfort in that Shakespeare and I were in love when the whole world was going to hell.’

Marlowe, climbing briskly away from the river with no signs of being drunk, turned as if to check he was not being followed.

Goodluck ducked into a recessed doorway, pulling Lucy after him. The space was dark and cramped. Their eyes met.

‘Why are we following Master Marlowe?’ she asked in a whisper.

‘Because he is a spy and I wish to know who he is working for. And to what purpose.’

Her eyes narrowed, watching him. ‘Is that why you were with him on Jensen’s barge today?’

‘I needed to watch him in a place where I would not be watched myself. And I would trust Jensen with my life.’ He smiled, remembering how Jensen had once nursed him back to health after he had nearly died, and his own horror on discovering her sex. ‘I am only sorry she got it into her head to come and disturb you. It was not necessary.’

She frowned. ‘Where have you been, Goodluck?’

‘Nieuwpoort.’

‘I thought the Spanish held most of the ports in the Low Countries.’

‘They do.’

He peeked out of the doorway. Marlowe had continued climbing and was almost at the top of the hill now. Soon he would be out of sight. It was imperative that he did not lose the boy.

‘Come!’ he jerked Lucy after him, hurrying up the steep hill with her at his back, both breathless and sweating in the warm afternoon.

When they reached the top, he was relieved to see that Marlowe was still in sight.

The young player had stopped to talk to someone. A bearded man with a dog at his heels. Goodluck did not recognize him, but then he had been out of London for a while. Besides, this man had the air of a foreigner.

Goodluck waited in the shadows until the man moved on, limping along beside Marlowe, no doubt taking him to a place where they could talk more privately.

‘Time to move on again,’ he whispered to Lucy, and began to follow, watching all the time in case Marlowe entered any of the taverns or private houses. ‘Keep close.’

Lucy was still breathing hard after the hill, though the heat was not so intense here, the old timbered houses leaning in close, shutting out the sun. The street was busier too, people crowding past on their way down to the river, perhaps to spend an evening on Bankside. He had heard the drummers and fife players on their way up the river, and men shouting all afternoon about the celebrations to be held across the bridge that evening, out of reach of the city fathers.

He glanced at her, and was surprised to see anger in her eyes.

‘I had no idea you were in the Low Countries,’ she told him, pausing to catch her breath. ‘Even Lord Leicester abandoned the fight there when they were overrun by the Spanish. Most of the English-held forts fell after he sailed for home, the fighting was so fierce.’ She squeezed his hand. ‘You could have been killed, Goodluck. Do you care nothing for your life?’

‘Those forts did not fall to the Spanish,’ he corrected her, his gaze still on Marlowe ahead of them. ‘They were surrendered without a fight.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘Treachery,’ he explained shortly. ‘Not every Englishman has his country’s good in his heart.’

‘Is that why you went there? Into the enemy’s camp? On Walsingham’s command, to smoke out a traitor?’

‘Where there are traitors, there are plots against Her Majesty. I go wherever Walsingham sends me. He has been a good master all these years. I have no complaint to make against him.’

‘So trusting!’

He was angry himself then, the blood beating loudly in his head. But then he noticed Marlowe step aside into a doorway further up the street.

‘Wait here,’ he ordered her.

Goodluck pushed through a crowd of black-capped students arguing fiercely in the middle of the street, and came to within a few doors of the house Marlowe had entered. There he stopped; the windows on the first floor were unshuttered, due to the heat, and he did not wish to be seen from within. He stood flat against the wall and listened, but could hear nothing over the noise of the crowd.

The door opened and a beggar came out, limping, a wooden crutch under one arm. His face was swarthy, his hair long enough to touch his dirty collar, and when he called out a cheery greeting to a passing acquaintance, Goodluck realized that he was an Irishman.

Hurrying to catch him up, he put a hand on the man’s shoulder. ‘Friend,’ he said with a ready smile, ‘I could not help hearing your voice there, for you speak with the self-same accent as my own dear mother, too long departed from this earth, God rest her soul.’

The beggar halted, squinting at him against the setting sun. ‘Your mother was Irish?’

‘Indeed she was, and I thank you for reminding me of her sweet face. But I see you have not the use of both legs.’ He fumbled in his purse for a coin. ‘Unless it gives offence, would you accept this small token in memory of my mother?’

The man’s eyes lit up. He took the coin, but cautiously, biting on it, then slipping it hurriedly into some pouch concealed under his tattered coat. ‘Thank you, sir, thank you. And may your mother’s soul rest in peace. From what part of Ireland did she come?’

‘From Dublin.’

‘Ah, it’s a beautiful city. Well, good day to you, sir, good day.’ And touching his cap, the beggar began to limp away, supported on his crutch. Goodluck fell into step beside him, which surprised the man, but his easy smile seemed to set him back at his ease. ‘Will you take a sup of ale with me, sir?’ the Irishman said. ‘There’s a tavern on the corner will serve me if I sit outside and make no fuss.’

‘Alas, I cannot, for I am to meet a man in this street. But so far I have not seen him. Perhaps you would know him? His name is Marlowe.’

The beggar looked at him hard. ‘Marlowe? You know Marlowe?’

Goodluck nodded, watching him. There was a moment’s silence. He felt himself begin to sweat, thinking he had baited the trap wrongly. Then the man shrugged, wiped a hand across his brow and gestured back down the street. ‘The house with the carved elephant above the door. You’ll find him within. I go there for alms sometimes, for I served the master of that house before I lost my leg in battle.’ He slapped the crutch. ‘If I had not been cut down, I would be there still. For I left many good men and friends behind.’

‘In Ireland?’

‘No, sir, in the Low Countries.’

Goodluck’s mind leapt ahead. ‘You served under Sir William Stanley?’

‘Aye.’

His heart was racing. ‘And that is Stanley’s house?’

‘One of them.’ The beggar’s eyes narrowed suspiciously on his face. ‘What did you say your name was?’

‘I didn’t,’ Goodluck said shortly, then nodded his head. ‘Good day to you.’

Returning swiftly to where he had left Lucy, Goodluck took her by the arm and steered her towards the network of tiny lanes and alleys which he knew would take them back to his house, only rather quicker without having to push through the crowds.

‘Whose house was that?’ she asked once they had traversed several lanes.

Goodluck glanced over his shoulder, but no one was following them. It felt safe enough to share what he had discovered. ‘It belongs to Sir William Stanley, though he is not at home at present. Nor will he be, once Walsingham learns of this house, for his estate should be forfeit to the crown. Indeed, I rather suspect Stanley will be occupied for some time with leading Spanish forces against the English.’

‘Sir William Stanley is the traitor you were watching abroad?’

‘The very man.’ Goodluck frowned, thinking back over what he had seen and heard. ‘The question is, why is Marlowe visiting one of Stanley’s houses while Stanley himself is far away on the other side of the sea? Marlowe and his men performed before Stanley and the garrison at Nieuwpoort. Did Stanley charge him with some errand once he was back in London?’ He shook his head. ‘It makes no sense.’

‘You think Marlowe is a traitor too?’

‘I think he has some questions to answer, certainly. And I must see Walsingham tonight. But first, I shall take you safely home.’

She handed him the key as they approached the house in Cheapside, and he unlocked the door. It was not often these days that he spent much time at home. He looked about the place in dismay while Lucy hung up her cloak and tidied her springing hair under the tight white cap. The fire had been recently lit, but had not warmed the stones. The house felt damp and unwelcoming. It needed to be lived in, not left to stand empty for months at a time.