License to Quill (27 page)

The poet's eyes widened. “Well…” he gasped, “that's a nice even sum. I'll take it! Also, just so I know, is there a chance I could maybe … retire here?” Marlowe's eyes wandered over the clandestine temple.

The three rabbis fell silent.

“No,” Rabbi Saraval answered flatly. “It is too dangerous.”

“The entire ghetto would be at risk,” said Rabbi Pardo.

“It was our agreement,” the head rabbi grunted, “to get you
out
of Venice.”

The poet's face sank with disappointment. “How much time do I have left in the city?”

“You leave at dawn,” said Pardo.

Marlowe gaped. “Oh no, no, no! That's not enough time! Drago could still be alive! If he's captured … You just said he's cut deals with the doge! I have, too! Well, the doge's nephew, but … still! I can't just leave him here! Drago has to come with me! I'll rescue him from prison and cut him free from the gallows if I have to!”

“It is too dangerous for you to go
anywhere
other than where he said,” Rabbi Saraval grumbled.

Marlowe grimaced. “Someone—nay,
someones
—tried to kill me tonight! Some gang of killer women operating from here to Belgrade to Istanbul! They killed
hundreds
of people in one deadly dance! You expect me to leave my friend against
them
!”

“You said yourself that he's dead,” Azariah Figo interjected from across the synagogue.

“I said it
looked
like he was dead!”

“You told us that you did not expect to see him again,” Rabbi Saraval added.

“Young man…” The head rabbi spoke with sympathy. “The loss of your friend is a painful loss to us as well! There is
no
replacing him. His life was a world of life to us.”

Marlowe shook his head, still not ready to surrender. “Did he leave any sort of message for me? A clue, or a codex? A cryptic sentence? Some silly puzzle box I need to solve?” he asked, flicking his fingers together.

The rabbis were silent.

Marlowe scratched his stubble and glanced at Rabbi Pardo. “You said he left money for me.”

“Yes. Three thousand—”

“Do you handle his finances?”

Rabbi Pardo was caught off guard by this question. “No.”

Marlowe cursed in English.

“That is … not me personally,” the rabbi continued. “But I know who does. His name is—”

“Does he live in this ghetto?”

“Yes.”

Marlowe snapped his fingers and pointed to the students. “Go wake him up!”

 

Act IV

1605

 

Chapter XXVIII

The Man Who Bested Walsingham

Giotto's Campanile stands a towering 278 feet over Florence, making it fifty-five feet shorter than the angelic summit that Christopher Marlowe scaled in Venice. But for all the beauty the poet bathed in atop the Campanile San Marco, he appeared to be enjoying his current viewpoint even more. Saint Mark's Basilica was no Brunelleschi's dome—or at least not from the outside. The Palazzo Ducale lacked the Palazzo della Signoria's impressive clock tower. The Lion of Venice was but a stray cat to Benvenuto Cellini's heroic bronze of Perseus. And none of Sansovino's sculptures or Titian's paintings could compare to Michelangelo's
David
. Yes, the Queen of the Adriatic still commanded the cyan sea from her marble throne, but returning to the Tuscany that inspired Dante reawakened Marlowe to the floral world he had forgotten. It had been more than a decade since the English poet had set foot on solid ground, but there he was, basking in the Tuscan sun atop a tower of red Siena, white Carrara, and green Prato marble.

It was a beautiful afternoon to reconnect with Florence, the city that reinvented history.

As the seven bells of Giotto's Campanile tolled beneath him, the poet lowered his gaze and returned to the task at hand. It was Sunday, April 10, and Easter service had just ended. The Santa Maria del Fiore's doors were opening, and somewhere through its throng of distinguished Florentines was Marlowe's target.

It had taken Marlowe several days to find Roberto di Ridolfi after arriving from Ferrara. According to the dragoman's banker in the Venetian Ghetto, Roberto deposited a fixed income into his friend's account on a routine basis. The payment always arrived the day before the dragoman would hand Marlowe his monthly pension, which made the poet suspect a deeper connection between the two, especially considering the name involved. The Ridolfi family was the most prominent banking house in Florence, and at seventy-three years old, Roberto had become their patriarch. He had spent decades setting up shop overseas, including spending more than fifteen years in London. He enjoyed the service of kings and popes, and had recently been made a senator of Florence.

Roberto owned a palazzo across the Arno on Via Maggio, which was where his stealth pursuer was looking forward to having him. You see, Christopher Marlowe had known the name Roberto di Ridolfi his entire life. In 1571, Roberto masterminded a plot to assassinate Queen Elizabeth.

The poet's doeskin boots hit the ground before the Campanile's bells had finished chiming.

*   *   *

The Ridolfi plot was an international conspiracy involving the king of Spain, the pope in Rome, coconspirators from Norfolk to the Netherlands, and none other than Mary, Queen of Scots. Engineered by Roberto himself, the scheme called for a Catholic rebellion in northern England to coincide with Queen Elizabeth's murder, restoring Mary to the English throne. Ridolfi personally financed the plot for years, and it nearly succeeded despite a chance encounter with a man whom Roberto would later boast should have beheaded him twenty-five times over. In 1569, a thrity-seven-year-old Roberto was put under house arrest by the Privy Council so that they could have someone question him. The man specifically chosen by Elizabeth's secretary of state, Sir William Cecil, was a thirty-seven-year-old Francis Walsingham.
*
After being interrogated by the official who would soon become one of the most powerful men in history, the Italian spy and the English agent shared a conversation of enormous consequence but of little record. Ridolfi, to the shock of everyone, was released from custody, and shortly after, Walsingham recommended Roberto to the Privy Council as an upright man both wise and honest.
†
It was, to any observer, the single biggest failure in Francis Walsingham's career. The Ridolfi plot continued without interruption for two years, and its godfather went down in history as the only person to ever best England's greatest spymaster.

And on this Easter Sunday, Christopher Marlowe was there to kill him.

After racing across the Arno through the Corridoio Vasariano, Marlowe exited the secret passage at Santa Felicita, whose gate he had unlocked earlier. The poet scaled the church with a waiting ladder, which he used to ascend the higher parts of the surrounding rooftops. Marlowe had plotted his path days in advance to avoid being seen in daylight. The poet peered over the edge of the rooftop to look upon the busy crowds on Via Guicciardini. To his right, he saw his target approaching from the Ponte Vecchio. Marlowe stepped back and stalked his target across the rooftops until they were both outside the Ridolfi home on Via Maggio. Roberto unlocked the palazzo doors while his pursuer entered through the windows, unnoticed. By the time the old man had climbed upstairs to change his clothes, the English poet was already waiting for him in his empty bedroom.

Roberto entered the wooden chamber, and Marlowe quietly closed the door behind him.

The old man heard a floorboard creak. Slowly, he turned around.

Silence.

“Buona Pasqua,” the poet ultimately offered in Tuscan.

“Happy Easter,” Roberto replied. He then drew a breath and asked: “Am I dead?”

“That depends,” said his assassin.

The old man leaned forward and squinted, his eyes barely visible beneath his enormous eyebrows. “Are
you
dead?” he asked politely.

Marlowe was not expecting that. After thinking it over, he exhaled and said: “I don't even know anymore.”

“Ahhh…” The old man spoke with familiarity. Returning to that matter in a minute, “May we talk first?”

The poet nodded. “Yes, we may.”

Marlowe took a step back and leaned against the door behind him while his captive limped feebly across the room. After Roberto collapsed into an ancient chair, the poet noted: “You're healthier than you pretend, old man.”

Once more, Roberto froze, but this time his eyes narrowed out of anger. “What makes you say that?” he asked in a clearer, stricter voice.

“If you were so decrepit, you would have moved your bedroom to the bottom floor. And you would at least have had a servant working.” The poet smirked. “I have been following you for days.”

Unmasked, Roberto di Ridolfi's face completely morphed. Instead of appearing weak and fettered, his eyes homed in on Marlowe's like a falcon's. The senator scowled and straightened himself, sitting upright in his seat as if his bedroom were the Salone dei Cinquecento. “Who sent you?” he asked.

“I did.” Marlowe kicked himself off the door and swaggered forward, his right hand clenched into a fist on his parrying dagger's grip. “You're not expecting anyone this afternoon, are you?”

“No,” the senator scowled. “I am expected somewhere else, though.”

The poet batted his eyelashes. “You'll be keeping them waiting quite a while, then.” Marlowe leaned against a dresser with his elbow out and his cape unfurled as if posing for a portrait. “I know who you are, old man, and I must say: seeing you up close is a disappointment.”

“I am not sorry to hear that.”

The assassin raised an eyebrow. “Are you not surprised by this, then? Your death?”

The senator shook his head. “No. I knew this day would come.”

His killer smiled. “You should be surprised that death didn't get you sooner! I know that
I
am! If I bested you so easily, so should have Francis Walsingham.”

With that name, a sea change washed over Roberto's eyes. He looked deep into the poet's features. “You're an Englishman,” he deduced.

Marlowe wrestled with this in his mouth. “It's been a long time since I called myself one, but yes.”

The old man nodded. He considered staying this subject, but since it was not in his killer's interest, he asked: “Why are you here?”

The poet flicked the tip of his dagger's pommel with an itchy thumb. “You've been in contact with a friend of mine in Venice for quite some time. You send him money every month.”

The senator nodded very, very slowly. And then he parried: “Did you know his name?”

The slight smirk on Marlowe's face vanished, stolen by his opponent. “I…” he struggled. “I know it's difficult to pronounce. I've only heard him say it once. And I … was tired,” the sobered-up poet lied.

Roberto's face wrinkled with skepticism. “You know so little of your friend, then.”

The poet popped his dagger from its scabbard. “Don't talk about Drago that way.”

“Drago?” asked the senator.

Marlowe gripped his weapon. “He liked that name.”

Roberto processed this with a blank canvas of emotions. “You knew him, then?” he asked, deliberately using the
imperfetto
to upset Marlowe.

“Yes,” the poet sneered. “Very well. We were friends for years. We ran an information exchange in Venice. I purloined documents when he needed them, and he shared whatever he had with me.” Marlowe's thoughts took a detour for a moment. “Which reminds me: Do you have any
kahfey
?”

The old man's brow furrowed. “
Café
?” he asked.

Marlowe's mouth opened. “YES! If that's what you call it, sure!”

Roberto shook his head. “I am sorry. I used the last of mine this morning.”

Marlowe grimaced and stomped his boot, shaking the building. “If you had some, I would drink it even if it were poisoned.”

The old man smiled. “If I shared some, it would not be poisoned.”

Marlowe snorted. “I don't believe you.”

“It's true.”

The poet rolled his eyes. “Well, just so I can find some when we're finished here, where did you get your
kahfey
?”

“From your friend,” replied Roberto.

Marlowe's blood boiled. “You're getting under my skin, old man.” He drew his dagger. “Perhaps it's time I get under yours.”

“I am only speaking,” said the senator.

“No, you're
torturing
me and embarrassing yourself. I know how you work, old man. Only someone like you could have organized a massacre like the one in Venice.”

Roberto's eyes clouded. “Massacre?”

Marlowe took a good look at his adversary: his hands, his feet, his face. Roberto's brow was not perspiring, for he was precisely in his element. The poet walked straight up to the senator and leaned down until their faces were nearly touching. “You know
exactly
what I'm talking about.”

A silence fell over the room that was quashed only by the sound of chirping birds. Neither man blinked. However, the senator was the first to move. He nodded, not in acknowledgment, but out of respect for the spy before him. Roberto knew better than anyone that it took talent for a man or woman—or lady—to survive what Christopher Marlowe must have suffered. “What do you know about my ‘encounter' with Walsingham?” the old man asked. “Sir Francis Walsingham,” he clarified.

Marlowe raised an eyebrow. “Should I have him confused with someone else?”

Roberto di Ridolfi wisely kept his mouth shut about Thomas Walsingham.