Silent Court (24 page)

William the Silent himself still had his head bandaged, but it was carefully covered by a broad plumed hat and he wore silk sashes with orders glittering on his chest. Beside him, Princess Charlotte looked old and ill and pale, but she managed a smile for the Egyptian children. The Nassau girls, in order of age and height, stood on the dais around their parents, dressed like their mother, looking like them both. Little Katharina saw Brackett’s snake and her eyes lit up. But she was six and her father was the Statholder of the United Provinces; she knew how to behave and she didn’t move an inch. Emilia was less demure. At half her sister’s age, she didn’t have her decorum and her dress was heavy with brocade and itchy. She saw Starshine, a girl not much older than she was and she saw the tambourine.

In a second she had struggled free from her mother’s restraining hand and was standing in front of Starshine, pointing at the tambourine and jabbering away in Dutch. Lily gently took the instrument out of Starshine’s grubby hands and gave it to the littlest princess, who gurgled with delight and shook it, at first gently, then with all the power she possessed.

Hern had not taken his eyes off the man who stood on the dais to the Statholder’s right, a little behind the throne. Kit Marlowe was no longer in the ribboned rags of the Egyptians but wore a pair of Venetian breeches and a doublet and cloak of the Dutch court, a swept-hilt rapier gleaming at his hip.

‘Come forward, Master Hern,’ William said in his clearest English. Hern obeyed and repeated the flourish he had given to Hans in the courtyard.

‘Which is the girl, Lily?’ William the Silent wanted to know.

Hern clicked his fingers and she crept forward, not wanting to look at the Statholder nor at Marlowe beside him. She curtseyed low and when she tried to rise again, Hern held her still so that she ended up kneeling, bareheaded in her sack dress, like a ragged saint in the old pictures of William’s youth.

‘My child,’ he said and beckoned her to him. She knelt in front of him on the dais and stared at his gilded shoes. He beckoned Hans who was carrying a cushion and he took from it a gold chain with the enamelled lion of Nassau and heavy pearls hanging from it. The Statholder laid it around Lily’s neck and she gasped with the cold on her bare skin and the weight of it. ‘That,’ said William softly, ‘is for saving the life of the Statholder. For saving the life of the Netherlands.’

He glanced up at Hern who had not moved, except for his jaw hanging a little further open. ‘It would buy me a warship,’ the Statholder told him, ‘or a regiment of pikemen. It will keep you and your band for life.’ The Egyptians looked at each other, amazed and then their disbelief turned to an excited jabbering that the Nassaus could not understand. Only Hern remained silent; only Emilia was still tinkling her tambourine.

Suddenly, Hern clapped his hands and all was still. He unhooked the chain of office from Lily’s neck. ‘We cannot accept this, sir,’ he said. There was an inrush of air from almost everybody. Protocol had floated out of the window into the courtyard below. Only the Spaniards treated William the Silent with such contempt. Hans was appalled and spun on his heel, leaving the chamber.

‘My Lord,’ Hern said to the Statholder, ‘your fires have warmed us for these past weeks. Your kitchens have fed us. We are not used to company like this. In England –’ he grinned at Marlowe – ‘for a prince to entertain an Egyptian is unheard of. Descended as we are from the Ptolemies of old, there is no precedence for this. Lily did what she did because she can. Let that be enough.’ And he clapped his hands again, laying down the gold chain on the dark blue carpet as he did so. Instantly, the Egyptians all bowed or curtsied and filed out, Starshine seizing the moment, as little girls will, to snatch back her tambourine.

Lily had not moved. Heaven had been offered to her with that chain and Hern had snatched it away. Balthasar read her thoughts and hung back to lift her to her feet. The royal family had not moved.

‘Gunpowder!’ It was Balthasar’s voice echoing through the vast hall, bouncing off the vaulted ceiling and bringing armed guards at the double. The soothsayer darted across to the corner where a bright line of sparks was hissing across the floor, making for the dais. Marlowe was only a second behind him and the two men threw themselves on the crackling black line, billowing puffs of smoke now as it neared the throne.

The Statholder had the presence of mind to gather his family to him, but little Emilia was still standing in the line of fire, bereft of her tambourine, scarlet-faced and wailing. Marlowe dashed forwards and lifted the girl up under one arm and shepherded the others to the far corner.

Balthasar stood up, his face and clothes singed and blackened. Hans clattered into the chamber with yet more guards and the halberds clashed together against all exits, penning the Egyptians and the royal family in. Marlowe checked there was no more danger. No cocked pistols, no murderous flashing knives. Then he followed the line of powder that nobody had noticed, on past the dais to a recess in a wall. Here the unburned fuse dangled from a wooden tinderbox, half hidden by a carpet. Balthasar was with him.

‘
Wat heb je daar
?’ William asked, in Dutch because he was so shaken.

‘What is it?’ Hans asked in English, only now venturing a little nearer.

‘A bomb,’ Marlowe told him, ‘and a clever one. Balthasar, have you ever seen anything like this?’

The soothsayer shook his head. ‘Never,’ he said. ‘My tricks are of the less earthly kind. I leave the flashes and bangs to others.’

Marlowe looked across at the Egyptians, cowering silently in the corner. Only Hern stood upright, defiant, proud, unmoved by the near miss of the last few seconds. Simon stood blinking with the speed and terror of it all, crossing himself repeatedly in minuscule movements which Marlowe only noticed because he knew who he was and what he would need at this moment. Simon the Jesuit. The man in the room who would most want the Statholder dead.

‘Why wasn’t the thing hidden here?’ Hans asked, peering into the box full of black powder, ‘under the throne? Assuming as we must that His Highness was the intended victim.’

‘Because I checked there,’ Marlowe told him, ‘every inch of the dais, the throne, the carpet.’ He looked up at the stone column against which the makeshift bomb lay. ‘And this –’ he patted the cold stone – ‘would have been just as effective.’ He pointed to the Gothic ribs of stone that radiated to the boss in the centre. ‘One explosion here and the entire roof would have caved in.’ He looked solemnly at the Statholder. ‘Your entire family would have gone, Highness,’ he said.

Hern crossed to Balthasar and Marlowe. ‘You have left us, Master Marlowe,’ he said, gesturing to the man’s clothes.

‘Nothing is forever,’ Marlowe said. ‘What do you know about this?’

‘Saltpetre, sulphur and charcoal.’ Hern shrugged. ‘Black powder; deadly if you know how to use it.’

‘And you do,’ Marlowe told him. ‘You use it in your act all the time.’

‘Tut, tut, Master Marlowe.’ Hern smiled. ‘And here was I thinking you believed in our magic.’

‘There’s nothing magic about murder,’ Marlowe said, staring the man down. ‘Balthasar, have you been in this room before?’

‘Never.’ The man shook his head.

‘Hern?’

The leader of the Egyptians shook his.

‘Which leaves…’ Marlowe looked at the others across the hall, huddled together, Simon comforting the children and looking anxious, Frederico not understanding any of it.

‘. . . Hans,’ he said softly.

Hern was too old a hand to turn to stare at the chamberlain but Balthasar could not resist it. Hans was in earnest conversation with the Statholder as each man took stock of what had just happened.

‘No,’ Balthasar said. ‘That’s impossible.’

Marlowe stood in front of him. ‘Who’s talking now?’ he asked. ‘The country bumpkin who just happened to know Edward Kelly or the seer of souls who prophecies men’s deaths?’

Balthasar blinked. He’d come to like Kit Marlowe over their weeks together, but there was something about him that was dangerous. ‘He’s the Statholder’s right-hand man,’ he said. ‘We’ve all seen that.’

‘And you’ve seen more of it than the rest of us,’ Hern reminded Marlowe. ‘You tell us, Judas.’

Before Marlowe could answer, Hans had thudded the floor with his staff of office and the guards began to shepherd the Egyptians, Hern and Balthasar with them, out of the doors and along the corridor. The chamberlain bowed low to the Statholder before taking his leave and followed them out, just to make sure they’d really gone. He’d double the guard on their courtyard camp tonight; you couldn’t take chances with the children of the moon. On his way, he noticed a piece of parchment flutter to the ground and swept it up in one fluid movement.

William the Statholder stroked his wife’s pale cheek and kissed her, nodding to the remaining guards to take his family to their quarters. ‘Check every room,’ he barked at them. ‘Under the beds, in the cupboards, everywhere. I’ll personally see to it that any man failing in his duty has his tongue cut out.’

They saluted with heels and halberds and led the family away, the children babbling excitedly and little Emilia still lamenting the loss of the tambourine.

‘Can you tell me why?’ the Statholder said to Marlowe as he picked up the golden chain from where Hern had placed it. ‘Why people to whom this represents a lifetime’s wages would turn it down.’

Marlowe shook his head. ‘I long ago gave up trying to understand the Egyptians,’ he said, ‘but we have more pressing problems, Highness…’

The Statholder held up his hand. ‘My life has been saved twice,’ he said, ‘and by an Egyptian each time. But I thank you for your speed and quick thinking, Master Marlowe. Sir Francis Walsingham has chosen wisely.’

‘It’s not about the Egyptians we need to talk, Highness,’ Marlowe said.

In the low-vaulted chamber below the courtyard, beyond a door through which only one person walked, the chamberlain to the House of Nassau kissed the crucifix on the altar and knelt in silent prayer. Then he opened the piece of paper he had just picked up from the floor in the passageway above and read the two words, ‘Marlowe knows.’

He crossed himself and made for the light.

The Statholder was sitting at his dining table as darkness fell on that short winter’s day. Around him servants drew the heavy velvet curtains and lit the candles. The logs crackled and spat in the huge ornate fireplace, cursing the world as they died in the flames. Kit Marlowe looked up from a chair next to the Statholder as Hans swept in. For an instant, he faltered in his stride, then stood at the far end of the great table, bowing low before his master.

‘Hans…’ the Statholder’s voice tailed away, ‘Master Marlowe has something to say to you.’

The chamberlain raised an eyebrow and barely acknowledged the Johannes-come-lately at his master’s elbow. For all his bravado and his devil-deep eyes, the man was no better than a common thug and here was the most powerful man in the Low Countries giving him house room.

‘How long have you served the Statholder, Hans?’ Marlowe asked.

The man blinked. ‘All my adult life,’ he said. ‘As my father served his father.’

‘And when did you break with Rome?’

‘I don’t understand,’ Hans said.

‘It’s simple enough.’ Marlowe got to his feet and switched to Flemish to make it easier for the man. ‘When did you forsake his Holiness the Pope, whom we in England call the Bishop of Rome? When did you take the sacrament of the Calvinist church?’

Hans blinked again. ‘Some years ago,’ he said.

‘Precisely when?’ Marlowe badgered him.

‘Highness…’ Hans began, but Marlowe interrupted.

‘Look at me, sir,’ he growled. ‘
I
am your worst nightmare. When did you convert to the Protestant faith?’

‘I cannot remember,’ Hans shouted back, ‘precisely.’

‘Very well.’ Marlowe was calmer now and turned to the only window still undraped. The servants had gone and William liked to leave one light at a window and to see the darkening world beyond it. ‘You know the Prinsenhof well?’

‘Of course,’ Hans said, relaxing a little. ‘I have been with His Highness since we moved from Antwerp.’

‘You know all its little corridors and recesses? Its secrets, if you will?’

‘The place was a convent once,’ Hans told him. ‘I imagine it has many secrets. If we believe half of what we’re told about these nuns…’ Hans suddenly remembered Princess Charlotte’s former calling and apologized at once. ‘Oh, forgive me, Highness.’

The Statholder waved it aside. He was long past caring about slips of the tongue. ‘Get to the point, Master Marlowe.’ He sighed.

‘The point.’ Marlowe folded his arms, staring at his bobbing reflection in the window panes, the scholar gypsy framed by six haloes of candlelight. ‘When did you renounce the Protestant faith?’ His voice was only a little above a whisper now. ‘When did you rejoin the Church of Rome and kiss the arses of the Duke of Parma and King Philip of Spain?’

Hans stood speechless.

‘You see, Master Chamberlain, only you could have known where to place that powder box so that the roof would cave in. Only you had access to that amount of gunpowder. You left the room in outrage because poor frightened Lily, the Egyptian girl, was told to turn down the Statholder’s gold. In reality, you went to light the fuse in the corridor outside. Because you didn’t give a damn, did you? Statholder, wives, children, Egyptians, it didn’t matter to you. In fact, it was a bonus – Nassau and the heirs of Nassau under one collapsed, bloody roof. King Philip would give you one of his New World colonies in his sheer delight.’

The silence was almost audible. Even the logs in the grate were listening.

‘Hans,’ the Statholder whispered. ‘How could you?’

The chamberlain leapt forward, his rapier in his hand, overturning the table with a powerful kick and lungeing at the Statholder’s head. The blade bit deep into the wood as William ducked aside and Marlowe turned like a spinning top and threw his dagger which thudded into Hans’ back. He staggered, the sword gone from his grasp, trying weakly to pull the Englishman’s blade out. Marlowe caught him as he fell, blood trickling from his nose and mouth.