Traitor's Storm (14 page)

There was a tap at the solar door and Marlowe put his finger to his lips, urging Sledd to stay quiet and stay where he was. The boy looked around him, taking in his surroundings for the first time. He was lying on a tester, high in the bed, and the heavy brocade curtains to either side were embroidered with the Queen’s
Semper Eadem
. It was night and a soft glow of torchlight flickered through the latticed window from a passageway outside.

‘Who is it?’ Marlowe was still holding the candle but his right hand held the dagger hilt at his back.

‘It’s me, Master Marlowe. Avis Carey. I heard a cry.’

Marlowe hesitated, then slid back the heavy bolt and let the woman in.’

‘Oh,’ she said, raising her candle to peer at the forlorn figure sprawled on the bed. ‘I didn’t realize you had company. Who is this?’

‘Mistress Carey,’ Marlowe said, ‘may I introduce Thomas Sledd? A finer stage manager never drew breath. He is from the Rose and has come to put on a play for us.’

‘Oh,’ she said again, a smile breaking over her large, square face. ‘
You
are the young man who has come to help Master Marlowe and Georgie.’

Sledd was staring open-mouthed at the apparition in her voluminous nightgown. He looked at Marlowe, who nodded.

‘Yes,’ he slurred, his mouth more painful by the moment. ‘Yes, I am.’

‘You poor dear.’ Avis closed to him, setting her candle down and sitting on his bed. ‘What
have
you been doing to yourself?’

She took one of his hands in her meaty one and stroked the back of it with her thumb. It was strangely comforting and Sledd smiled as best he could. ‘Oh, it’s nothing,’ he winced.

‘A slight altercation with a candle, Madam,’ Marlowe explained.

‘Ah, these things will happen,’ she said. ‘Now, you wait there, Master Sledd. I have a poultice receipt that I can make up in a moment and it will put you right in a trice.’ She laid his hand down tenderly and picked up her candle, turning to go.

‘Mistress Carey,’ Marlowe stopped her. ‘Does the name
Bowe
mean anything to you?’

‘
Bowe
?’ she repeated. ‘No. Not a thing.

‘What about Thomas Page?’

Avis paused, frowning and thinking. ‘Oh, yes,’ she said with a sneer. ‘That snivelling rogue is a pirate. And yes, now you mention Page, the
Bowe
– I remember now. It is his ship. It – and the dreadful Page creature – work for John Vaughan. You will find him moored in the quay at Newport.’ She closed to the playwright. ‘Georgie will hang that man one day; you mark my words.’

And she hurried off to make her sovereign remedy for Thomas Sledd.

The Lord Admiral was not in the best of moods that evening in Plymouth. He paced to and fro in his rooms over the White Hart, arms locked behind his back, white beard shaking along with his head. At fifty-two he was too old for this game, chasing dangerously headstrong captains along the south coast. And he had not even started on the Spaniards yet.

‘Up and down, she says, Faunt,’ he snapped, his voice trembling with fury. ‘Up and down. Does she know what it’s like? Taking a ship to sea? Still less an entire fleet? I know for a fact the only time she’s set foot on the deck of a man of war is when she laid her sword on the shoulder of Francis Drake. And then the damn thing was safely tied up at Deptford.’

The Spymaster’s right hand thought it was time to play God’s advocate. ‘She
is
the Queen, my lord,’ he said softly.

Howard of Effingham stopped in his tracks and his narrow eyes flashed fire at the man. ‘I know exactly who she is, sir,’ he hissed. ‘She is my bloody cousin. My point,’ he tried to calm himself, staring at the untidy heap of charts and maps that cluttered his desk, ‘is that she doesn’t know a bowsprit from her elbow. And yet she proceeds to send me orders. Up and down! God, give me strength!’

‘I
am
just the messenger, my lord,’ Faunt reminded him.

Howard looked at the man. The time was he would have slit his throat and thrown his carcase to the fishes. But they were different days. Now, he had responsibilities. He made do by grabbing the projectioner by his braided sleeve and dragging him across the room. ‘You see these?’

Faunt did. There were forty letters if there was one, each one sealed with the Privy Seal and dangling with the Queen’s ribbon.

‘These are just
some
of the missives I have received from Her Majesty last month alone. And there are others. Those are, as Martin Frobisher never tires of saying, the tip of the iceberg. I am drowning in parchment. Can she give me more guns? Powder? Men? Ships?’ Howard did not wait for an answer. ‘No, Faunt. She can’t. All she can tell me to do is to use the ships I have and sail up and down the bloody Channel. Do you know what the odds are doing that? And finding a single Spanish galleon, I mean?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Nearly sixteen thousand to one. I had my comptroller on the
Ark
work it out for me. Preposterous!’ The man crossed to the latticed window and looked out on the inn’s courtyard, flickering with torchlight. It was full of soldiers, standing to, lying down, trying to find somewhere to sleep for the night. Beyond the inn, Howard knew, the entire town was bursting at the seams and the night rang to the rumble of cannon, the shouts of arriving quartermasters and the whinnying and stamp of horses.

‘You know they’ll make for the Wight, don’t you?’ The Admiral had not moved from the window, watching his reflection dance in the glass. ‘The dons.’

‘Sir Francis Walsingham thinks not, my lord,’ Faunt said. ‘He believes the target will be London.’

Howard spun to him. ‘Does he?’ he said with contempt. ‘Not what he was, is he, old Francis?’ There was concern on his face. ‘When last I saw him at Whitehall, he seemed drawn, distracted.’

‘These are trying times, my lord,’ Faunt said, though he too had noticed the changes of which the Lord Admiral spoke.

A silence passed between them. ‘Wind,’ Howard said quietly.

‘My lord?’

‘Wind. The Queen can keep her ships and her guns and her men. We’ll manage. What I really need is wind. I’ve got eighteen ships of the line out in the Sound and more arriving by the day. The point is that once they’re in, on present showing, they can’t get out again. If things don’t change I’ll have the whole fleet riding at anchor while Medina Sidonia turns England into a colony of Spain.’

Another silence.

‘No,’ said Howard, turning back to the window. ‘Mark my words, Faunt, the dons will make for the Wight first. They’ll take it and use it as a base for the invasion of the south. Then Parma will come.
He
will take London and Francis Walsingham will claim he was right all along.’ He half-turned to the projectioner. ‘And it’ll be the last claim he’ll ever make. Tell me, Faunt, have you ever been to the Wight?’

‘Never, sir.’

The Admiral closed to him. ‘I don’t want to interfere with your orders, but get over there, will you? See how my cousin George is doing? He’s not the brightest apple in the barrel.’

‘My lord.’ Faunt bowed as Howard’s mind and Howard’s body drifted across to his charts again, praying for wind.

In the passageway outside the projectioner nearly collided with a florid-faced man with a neatly trimmed beard. He was dressed in scarlet velvet with a Colley-Weston thrown back over his shoulder.

‘Faunt.’ The man nodded, the west country burr unmistakable even in that single syllable.

‘Drake.’ Faunt nodded back and neither man turned as Drake called, ‘That’s
Sir
Francis to you, pizzle!’

T
he mist was still wreathing the quay at Newport the next morning and the bell of St Thomas’s was tolling the faithful to prayer. The weather was still hardly that of summer, still being dull and cold, but the fine, soaking drizzle of Walter Hunnybun’s funeral had gone and the people of the Wight were making the most of the dry and were parading in their best. The market stalls had gone now and sharp-eyed Puritans were everywhere, making sure that the good citizens of the town were obeying God’s laws.

Kit Marlowe was not one of them. This time he had borrowed one of George Carey’s horses, a tall black that caracoled along the High Street, past the Audit House and along Holyrood. Here, Marlowe found a ragged urchin to hold his horse and paid him handsomely, but not so handsomely that the boy did not wait for the rest of his retainer when the gentleman came back.

The
Bowe
rode at anchor, where the warehouses crowded with their cranes and gantries. Her sides were new-pitched and smelling to high Heaven, her sails furled. Marlowe knew enough about ships to know that it was etiquette to ask permission to come aboard, but he was in no mood for etiquette that morning. There was no one on the dog watch and he hauled himself up the creaking rope ladder, feeling the hemp sharp and rough under his fingers. The deck was deserted, coils of rope and barrels scattered the length of it. To Marlowe’s left the stern castle reared up and the helm was lashed with more rope. There was a gun here, a saker lashed in place and another one at the bows. The
Bowe
was too small for a man of war with guns along its hull to fire a broadside but there were stands of halberds and pikes in racks below the poop.

The ship was swaying slightly as a little breeze shivered down the river and seagulls wheeled screaming overhead. On dry land knots of the faithful were trudging up the hill to the church and George Carey’s Militia wandered the streets, trailing their pikes with the town watch.

Marlowe looked at the door that led to the cabins. He could open it silently, there was no doubt of that, but he could not do it without letting in light down the stairs and that would defeat his purpose. He pattered up the stairs to the poop deck and found another stash of small barrels. He slipped the ropes on these and threw them on to the main deck one after the other.

There was a bellow from below decks, a sudden rush of cursing and the clatter of pattens on planking. The door below Marlowe crashed back and a large, bearded man stood there, frowning at the smashed kegs and spilled salt that littered the deck.

‘I am terribly sorry,’ Marlowe said. ‘I didn’t wake you, did I?’

The man on the deck was squinting up to the pale sun trying to break through the low cloud. All he could see was a figure lounging against the ship’s helm. Then, realization dawned. ‘I know you,’ he said. ‘You’re Kit Marlowe.’

Marlowe smiled and bowed, without taking his eyes off the man. ‘And you must be Thomas Page …’

‘Master of the
Bowe
,’ the man finished Marlowe’s sentence for him, something a sensible man would not have done. ‘What are you doing on my ship?’

Marlowe sauntered down the steps so that he was nearly on the same level as the man. ‘
Your
ship?’ he said. ‘Now, why did I think the
Bowe
belonged to Master Vaughan and you were just his boot boy?’

Thomas Page may have had a clever answer ready, but he had no time to give it. Marlowe’s right boot lashed forward, driving into the captain’s face and he fell back, bleeding and groaning. The next thing he knew, he was lying face down on his own main deck. And the next thing after that, he was staring down towards the bows, his hair gripped like a vice in Marlowe’s left hand, while Marlowe’s right hand held a dagger blade horizontally across his throat.

‘I understand you’ve been asking after me,’ the poet said. ‘Being rather persistent in your enquiries with a friend of mine.’

‘Don’t know what you mean,’ Page could just about grunt, what with the pressure on his windpipe. He tried to move but Marlowe’s knee was in the small of his back and Marlowe’s full weight was behind that.

‘Oh, I think you do,’ Marlowe breathed in his ear. ‘So, just to reiterate … that means to say again, should you be wondering … I am a playwright. I have come to this demi-paradise to gain inspiration for my writing. In the process, I have agreed to put on a play for Sir George Carey. And Master Thomas Sledd has come to help me stage it. But I feel sure that he told you all of this when you met, did he not?’

Page just gurgled as he felt Marlowe’s blade graze his skin above his epiglottis.

‘Now, I don’t have the wherewithal at the moment to repay your hospitality to Master Sledd – no candles on me, as we speak – so what would you say if I just slit your throat and have done?’

‘Marlowe!’

The poet did not move but he heard the click of a wheel-lock behind him.

‘Let him go.’

For a split second that seemed to Thomas Page like a lifetime, Marlowe contemplated finishing the job anyway. Then he changed his mind and got up, bouncing the captain’s already bruised and cut chin on the deck.

‘Master Vaughan.’ Marlowe sheathed the dagger at his back. ‘How nice to see you again.’

‘You had better have an explanation for this, sir.’ Vaughan had not lowered the pistol. Page lay stunned and moaning on the planking.

‘Does this,’ Marlowe tapped him with his boot, ‘work for you?’

‘He is the Master of my ship, yes.’

Marlowe walked slowly towards the man. ‘So, when he interrogated my friend Thomas Sledd, burned his face with a candle and stole his purse, he was acting on your instructions?’

Vaughan looked horrified and released the catch of his gun. ‘Thomas,’ he said, frowning at the man. ‘Is this true?’

Whatever Page said, it was not comprehensible, what with the swelling and the pain; both the men still standing chose to ignore it. Vaughan crossed to his captain and aimed a hearty kick into his ribs. ‘I will not have this, you rogue,’ he snarled. ‘You are herewith deprived of your livelihood. You will collect your belongings together and be off my ship within the hour. Do I make myself clear?’

Page nodded and sighed. This was the old routine and he had lost count of the times that John Vaughan had sacked him. He looked forward to the evening when the merchant’s bag of silver and nod of reinstatement would make up for the pain now spreading down his side.

‘Master Marlowe, how can I make all this up to you? Will you take some wine with me? That’s my house over there.’