Traitor's Storm (21 page)

Norris shielded his eyes against the glare of the sky. A spray of water burst short of the pinnace’s bows.

‘Shit!’ the captain of East Cowes hissed. ‘Reload!’

Again, the hauling of the gun into position. The spongeman threw his bucket of water over the barrel, merely warm now but as the shooting went on it would become too hot to handle. The powder was thrown in, black and evil-smelling, and the nine pounds of iron was rolled in after it.

‘Damn Richard Turney to Hell!’ Norris bellowed. ‘Why isn’t he firing too? What’s the matter with the man? I told him,’ he said to his gunners, ‘I told Carey that Turney was no bloody good at his job. Now I see him in his true colours – he’s in the pay of the bloody King of Spain! Fire!’

The demi-culverin crashed again and this time the pinnace’s bowsprit was blown to matchwood, causing the ship to veer sharply as her helmsman hauled on his wheel. A cheer rose up from the ramparts of Norris Castle. This was better. They had found their range now and the next shot would rip a hole in her side that a horse and cart could rattle through.

‘For God’s sake!’ Richard Turney was rushing along his battlements, the telescope that gave him his omniscience thrown to a lackey. ‘What the bloody hell is Norris doing? Doesn’t he know his flags? That’s George Carey out there. He’s firing on his own Captain.’

‘He’s firing on his own Captain!’ George Carey fumed on the quarterdeck of
El Comendador
. He looked around at his motley crew. To be fair to the Essex boys, they had done well to bring the ship around the headland, considering there was not a sailor among them, but this was too much. Their faces were white and they were squinting at the dark trees above Norris Castle to see where the shots were coming from. Carey had done all he could. He had struck the Spanish colours and raised his own standard of the white roses.

‘Shall we fire on them, sir?’ a corporal of Militia asked, seeing this option as one that might keep him alive.

‘No, for God’s sake,’ Carey growled. ‘They might be idiots enough to fire on an Englishman, but I won’t compound the problem. Anyway,
can
you?’

The corporal shifted uneasily. ‘Er … I’ve seen it done,’ was the best he could do.

‘Yes,’ Carey said. ‘So have I. I know for a fact the man’s only got one cannon on those ramparts. We’ll be out of his range in a minute. Shout. All of you, shout.’

‘What’ll we shout, sir?’

‘I’d like it to be “We’re going to cut your bollocks off for this, Norris” but it might be misconstrued, what with the wind. God Save the Queen. Shout that – now.’

And twenty-one voices bellowed across the Medina.

‘Are they surrendering, sir?’ Stanley asked his captain.

‘Don’t know,’ Norris said. ‘I can’t make out what they’re saying. Fire!’

And the third shot sailed out over the water, ripping George Carey’s banner to shreds and crashing into the water beyond. And
El Comendador
sailed on into what the Captain of the Wight hoped were safer waters.

The door was leaning ajar when Marlowe found the house and he knocked as he pushed it open. He called out, ‘Is anyone here? Mary? Are you here?’

There was no sound from inside the house and he pushed open the door into what he thought he remembered was the kitchen. A fire burned in the grate, a kettle hanging over it starting to sing. If Mary was not there, she hadn’t been gone long. He opened the little door in the wall and called up the stairs, but there was not a sound.

He stepped back on to the flags of the kitchen and stepped back into a vice-like embrace, an arm around his neck and a point digging into his kidneys through his doublet. A voice in his ear hissed, ‘Don’t try and get away. I will skewer you where you stand.’

Marlowe raised his hands and said, equally quietly, ‘Let go of me and I won’t move.’

‘Do you think I am an idiot?’ the voice grated. ‘Mary!’ The voice was loud in his ear. ‘Come over here like a good girl and take this gentleman’s dagger.’

Out of the corner of his eye, Marlowe saw Mary Sculpe come out from behind a press which did not quite fit the alcove in the corner. It would not be many more days before she would not fit beside it, because the gentle swelling Marlowe had seen when they first met was now frankly visible and she had taken to wearing her apron tied above the bump, with no attempt to hide it.

‘Mistress Mary,’ Marlowe said, as merrily as he knew how. ‘You are blooming, my dear.’

‘You know this man?’ the voice said in Marlowe’s ear.

‘Why, Harry,’ the girl laughed. ‘This is the gentleman I told you about, the one who was looking for you.’

‘Who are you?’ Hasler asked, his dagger still in the man’s back.

‘Christopher Marlowe,’ the poet told him. ‘And I can count among my friends Nicholas Faunt and Sir Francis Walsingham.’

‘Marlowe? Dear God!’

The dagger left its place above Marlowe’s kidney but the arm was still tight about his throat. ‘I have been looking for you. Faunt and Walsingham were getting worried. They thought you might have … been hurt.’

‘Or gone over to Spain,’ Hasler said, releasing his grip and letting Marlowe fall forward.

‘Or that, yes.’ Marlowe rubbed his throat and turned to his man. The spy was tall and thin, with floppy hair; Marlowe could see how he would be attractive to women. But yet another one not on Bet Carey’s extensive list. Perhaps he had turned her down. Marlowe turned to the girl. ‘I have some bad news for you, I fear, Mistress Sculpe,’ he said formally.

‘Oh, if it’s just about father being dead, I know that,’ she said brightly.

Marlowe blinked. ‘But we’ve only just fished him out of the water, down at the quay.’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘But we put him there last night, didn’t we, Harry? Well, Harry did most of the putting. I can’t really do no heavy lifting, just now.’ She cupped her growing belly. ‘I’m ’aving a babbie.’

Marlowe opened his mouth, closed it, thought and then spoke. ‘Congratulations to you both,’ he said.

Mary looked at him, confused, and then laughed and nudged Harry Hasler. ‘You see what he’s done. He thinks you’re my babbie’s father.’

‘Aren’t you?’ Marlowe said, in some confusion himself.

‘No,’ Hasler said shortly. ‘I am not. But she is coming back with me to … Let’s just say over in the West Wight. I won’t be Faunt’s plaything any longer. I have a cottage and a pig and a modest income by way of inducement from John Vaughan – who took me for a Customs man, by the way. Mary can come and keep house for me. The baby will grow up strong on milk and honey …’

‘Not if all you have is a pig,’ Marlowe pointed out. He was no husbandman, but even he knew you didn’t usually get milk from a pig, no matter how tame the animal.

‘I am speaking in general,’ Hasler said impatiently. ‘Where was I?’

‘Milk and honey,’ Marlowe reminded him.

‘Yes. The baby will grow up strong on milk and honey and we will all live happily ever after.’

Marlowe looked hard at the man. Had he lost his mind? ‘And if the baby’s father comes calling?’ he asked.

‘Then we will call the vicar, with bell, book and candle,’ Hasler said. ‘The baby’s father is dead.’

‘Like mine,’ Mary chipped in, folding her hands complacently over her stomach. ‘Both our fathers is dead. But only one man is dead, if you get my meaning, Master Marlowe?’

Marlowe looked at her. The girl didn’t seem to mind that she was an orphan and also carrying her father’s child. ‘I … I’m sorry, Mary,’ he said softly. ‘I didn’t know.’

‘No reason why you should do, Master Marlowe,’ she said cheerfully.

‘If we’re being strictly accurate,’ Hasler said. ‘Mary has lost a father and a grandfather today. It was a fine old family custom, you might say.’

Marlowe knew such things went on in country places, but somehow to meet it in broad daylight and to see the results in this bonny, happy girl was a little disconcerting. He beckoned to Hasler and they walked into the corner. Mary happily turned her attention to the kettle and poured some water on to some gruel in a pot on the side. She stirred it, singing quietly to herself and smoothing her stomach.

‘Master Hasler …’

‘Harry, please. If things had been different, we would have been friends, I think. Colleagues, at least. Sir Francis’s golden lads and all that.’

‘Harry. You do know she is mad, don’t you?’

‘As a tree, sadly. Keeping everything in the family will do that after a generation or two. She has been telling me. There hasn’t been anyone but an existing blood relation in this family since before Hal was on the throne … Hal the Sixth, that is.’

‘Did she kill him?’

‘She had a damned good try. Last night.’

‘Why now? Why not when he started … what he started?’

Hasler shrugged. ‘I’m not sure. Last straw, perhaps. Her story is a little garbled. From what I could make out, he came past her and stroked her stomach and talked to it. Called it his little maid.’

‘I see.’

‘I can’t tell if she was protecting the baby or was jealous. Either way, she hit him on the head with a skillet. I put the old bastard in the water, tied up in case he was still alive. I couldn’t find any signs of life, but you never know. Look, Marlowe, do you really need to talk to her any more? She hasn’t got many things of her own, but we were just getting them together to start back to my cottage.’

Marlowe looked over his shoulder to where the girl still stood, stirring and stroking. He made up his mind. ‘Go, then. The sailors undid the ropes and hauled the body away on a hurdle. They won’t say a word – I would imagine that Master Sculpe won’t be missed. But what about you? I understand you are a bit of a one for the ladies. How will you manage, with just a mad girl for company?’

Hasler laughed, a short bark with no humour in it. ‘Who told you that, Master Marlowe?’

‘I can’t remember. It seems to be the accepted rumour of choice.’

‘Let it be, then,’ Hasler said quietly, laying his hand on Marlowe’s sleeve.

‘Who sent the letter?’ Marlowe asked him.

‘Letter?’

‘The one in your chest upstairs. I found it.’

Hasler shrugged. He knew such nosiness went with the territory in the Projectioner business. ‘I know of no letter.’

Marlowe summoned up his years of learning by rote, of committing passages in Greek and Latin to memory. ‘“Tonight, my darling one,”’ he quoted. ‘“But be careful. He knows, I am sure of it. I long for the touch of your caress, the press of your lips on mine. My heart aches for you and my loins tremble. Three steps back and three steps fore.”’

Hasler looked blank. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I’ve never seen or heard that. I don’t know anyone who would write me a letter like that.’ He brought his face closer to Marlowe’s so the projectioner could feel his breath warm on his cheek. ‘My … companions are not the kind of lads who are much of a fist with a pen. If you understand me. But,’ he added, in unconscious echo of the sailor on the quay, ‘Least said, soonest mended. Mary and I will both have to make sacrifices, I think. But it will serve. If you ever get tired of the game yourself, Kit – well, I hope you find happiness.’ He smiled sadly and went over to the girl, putting an arm around her shoulder and planting a chaste kiss on her head.

Marlowe watched for a moment, and then saw himself out.

‘How can you just sit there?’ Pedro de Valdez wanted to know. ‘Like frightened children?’

Everybody except the Captain-General of the Ocean Sea was on their feet, screaming and shouting at him. His cousin Diego already had his dagger in his hand.

‘Gentlemen! Gentlemen!’ the Duke of Medina Sidonia did not raise his voice often, so when he did, people tended to listen. ‘I have not yet heard from His Majesty. It may be we will be going home; that there will be no Enterprise of England after all.’

‘You can’t believe that, Alonso,’ Juan de Recaldé said softly, shaking his head. A moment ago he had been on his feet too, in that little room in the fortress of San Anton overlooking the harbour at La Coru
ň
a; on his feet because he was a hidalgo of Spain, and, like all of them, wore his honour on his sleeve. But he was also the first to sit down. He had been at sea for longer than any of them and he knew that Medina Sidonia’s caution made sense.

‘No,’ the Captain-General said solemnly. ‘No, I don’t.’

‘And every day we waste,’ Pedro de Valdez said, sitting down too, ‘El Draque and his fleet get stronger. This little upset of ours will reach England soon if it hasn’t already. They must be laughing in their caps.’

‘We’re under strength, Pedro,’ Medina Sidonia said. ‘We cannot cross swords with Drake until the lost ships arrive.’

‘What if they don’t arrive?’ Valdez asked him. ‘What if they’re at the bottom of Biscay or blown to the Azores? Felipe won’t smile on us then. And neither will God.’

Silence hung heavily in the room. Then Medina Sidonia passed forward a document. ‘This,’ he said, ‘is an official minute, urging us to wait. I have already appended my signature. I would like you all to sign it too.’

One by one they scratched their names with a quill – Juan de Recaldé, Francisco de Bobadilla, Diego de Valdez, Hugo de Moncada and the rest. Soon, there was only one signature missing.

‘
All
of you,’ said the Captain-General.

Pedro de Valdez looked at them under sulky eyelids. Then he snatched the quill and wrote his name, though he would rather have torn the vellum in half. ‘War by committee,’ he growled. ‘Are we ancient Greeks that we fight like this?’

There was a commotion on the fortress walls outside and the rapid thunder of drums. Men were shouting, whooping, running along the battlements and hugging each other. Medina Sidonia threw open the casement. ‘What’s the trouble, there?’ he shouted to an officer on the ramparts below.

‘It’s the Levant squadron, sir!’ the man called back, happiness etched on his beaming face. ‘And the Hulks behind them.’

All the officers in the council chamber were on their feet again, the enmity of a moment ago forgotten. They were leaning out of the windows, whooping with everybody else and slapping each other on their backs. All that is except the cousins Valdez, who naturally kept their distance.