The Queen's Gold: A Christopher Marlowe Spy Thriller

by Steven Veerapen

  ‘Discover what he knows, Kit,’ said Ellwood.

  ‘Oh, I shall.’ Marlowe flashed his teeth. They were small, neat, like a child’s.

  Lewgar felt he should say something, make some protest. Here were two of his fellow students, closeted together to discuss their treasonous papistry. And here he was, caught, gulled into pretending to be one of them. He opened his mouth. ‘Goodnight, then,’ he said. He started as Marlowe took him by the elbow.

  ‘Come, then, Thomas,’ he said, his voice as cloying as overly sweetened wine. Lewgar pulled away but stepped out of the room anyway, eager to be away from it. Though it was a double of his and Marlowe’s own chamber downstairs, it stank of secrets. He was being thrown a lifeline, for whatever reason. Once free of the pair, he could make his representation to the Vice Chancellor in his own time. He could atone for equivocating – lying – about his faith.

  Marlowe stepped out behind him and drew shut the door. As he did so, Lewgar heard him exchange a few words softly – uncharacteristically softly – with Ellwood. He turned just in time to hear the soft snick and see the slab of darkness. ‘Not here,’ said his roommate, before he could speak. ‘Come.’

  Pushing past him, his tread airy, Marlowe bounced his way up the hall. Every few steps he took brought him into the soft beams of moonlight falling in through the windows to the quadrangle. Lewgar followed, his arms folded over his chest.

  When they reached their own room, Marlowe held the door open for him. Lewgar had not extinguished the candle; light again fell on his quarry, showing his meaningless smile. Warily, the failed spy slid inside and turned, backing towards the bed.

  Marlowe stepped towards the desk and collapsed on the stool, his smile intact. He wheeled around, picking up a book and continuing on until he had spun 360 degrees. Glancing down, he opened the little volume and danced a finger down the title page. ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Cicero. Hunted by the second triumvirate. His severed head spat upon and his tongue cut out and pricked with needles. Tongues do have a habit of winning great hatred.’ He dropped the book to the floor.

  Lewgar said nothing. His bedfellow, he had noticed on the walk downstairs, wore some kind of musk or scent. It was pleasant, cool and clean, fresh, like newly laundered sheets. It overwhelmed the smell of the beeswax. Lewgar’s eyes fell to the floor. And then, after a moment, he stooped to pick up the book and held it to his chest.

  Marlowe’s smile widened. ‘Well, I see you are a man of infinite recesses and deep concealments. Why do you follow me, Thomas?’

  Lewgar’s jaw tensed. ‘You are a traitor,’ he said.

  ‘Yet you didn’t know that when you followed. Why?’ He jerked his head towards the bed, setting his auburn curls bouncing. ‘Surely, you cannot require my back to warm your feet against the night?’ He reached up and began straightening the stiff, pleated ruffles of his shirt collar.

  ‘I … I knew you were at some wicked design, Christopher Marlowe. I knew it.’ Lewgar’s fingers tightened on the book, his fingers sinking into the hard leather. ‘Yet I didn’t know how deeply your – your corruption ran. A papist! You and Ellwood – secret papists. Discussing treason – the Scotch queen – ships abroad – within these walls.’ Only saying the words brought the danger into focus. He had wished Marlowe expelled from the college, not tried and executed. That now seemed possible – even likely. ‘I suggest you run. You and your friend upstairs. Run from England.’

  ‘Are you going to run? Off to the Vice Chancellor, Thomas? Do you intend to go crying “treason” like a mewling, puling babe?’ Lewgar didn’t answer. Marlowe did not seem frightened. In fact, the fellow reclined on the stool, the back of his doublet pressing onto the desk’s edge. ‘I shouldn’t, if I were you.’

  ‘And why not? I heard you. I will report you, and rightly so.’

  ‘Ay, you heard. Not, perhaps, what you thought to hear … but ay, you heard. You dislike me, don’t you Thomas?’

  ‘I dislike –’

  ‘No, fetch me no excuses. You think me a sluggard. An unthinking, uncaring dolt.’ He grinned. ‘You hate me, in truth.’

  ‘I …’ Lewgar was lost. There was little more disconcerting than a man confronting you with your hatred. He relaxed his grip on the book, letting his arms fall by his sides. Drawing himself up to what he imagined was dignity, he said, ‘and rightly so. I dislike laziness. And any fellow who thinks to get by without proper study.’ It was true. Marlowe was of a type Lewgar had recognised long ago: a man content to coast along doing as little work as possible and yet passing everything without effort, all whilst trumpeting his accomplishments as though they were the result of divine providence. It was wrong. It was tantamount to cheating. It was damned unfair.

  ‘Mm. Fair. I myself have noted your devotion to study,’ said Marlowe. His lips fell into their usual lines, but his eyes hardened. Lewgar looked over him, towards the sharpening knife. It glinted on the desk. The candle was burning low, almost drowning itself. For the first time, he began to consider that his bedfellow might not just be lazy and corrupt but dangerous with it.

  ‘Tolle, lege. Tolle lege!’ he said. ‘A fine motto.’

  ‘Read, read,’ said Marlowe. ‘Ay, I have noted that you read the theories of friendship but do not engage the practice. A poor thing.’ An itch crept up Lewgar’s neck again. He resisted the urge to scratch at it. ‘You might be infected less by petty jealousies and suspicions if you embraced the practice.’ Marlowe shrugged. ‘Advice, that is all. Love a little more and hate a little less. I’d sooner burn my books than become such a man as counts them his only friends.’

  Lewgar grasped at the word like a drowning man. ‘Friends! With papists!’

  ‘Mm. What did you hear?’

  Ha! thought Lewgar. And ‘Ha!’ he said. ‘Enough.’

  Marlowe leant forward suddenly, catlike, and Lewgar stumbled backwards, tripping over his feet and coming down onto the soft bed. Its strings cried their protest. ‘Peace, bed,’ laughed Marlowe. ‘Else people will think we do more than sleep here.’ He cleared his throat. ‘You are not a very good spy, Thomas. A good man is silent always. He does not advertise his presence.’ He shook his head, as though sad, and then took a deep breath. ‘Shall we to bed?’

  ‘Bed?’ spluttered Lewgar.

  ‘Just so,’ said Marlowe. ‘You seem to wish it.’

  ‘I wish to – you’ve been – you’re a –’

  ‘A damned sight more articulate, is what I am. For all your love of books, you have not read your rhetoric closely enough, I think.’

  Lewgar pushed himself up, setting the bed and floorboards creaking again. ‘I will not spend the night with a papist. I will go to the Vice Chancellor even now. He must know of this.’

  ‘And a good spy does not reveal his plans to others, Thomas. I can see you have much to learn.’

  ‘Learn? Be silent.’

  Marlowe sighed. ‘By all means, then, run off to old Tyndall. I shall come with you, if it pleases you.’ He bounced up from the stool and gave a short bow. ‘Your servant, sir.’ Lewgar, gaining his feet without grace and with a grunt, kept his eyes on the fellow. Yet Marlowe remained standing, unmoving. ‘Yet I think you’ll repent of it. As you no doubt repent of protesting yourself a good son of Rome.’ Lewgar stopped, halfway to the door, and turned. ‘I serve a higher authority, dear Thomas, than our mighty Vice Chancellor.’

  ‘What?’ Lewgar’s arm fell, midway on its journey to the door ring. The atmosphere in the room seemed to thicken. He swallowed. ‘What?’ he asked again.

  Marlowe smiled. ‘Ah, I can see that you are a doubting Thomas. Keen to put the worst constructions upon matters.’ He held up his small hands, palms outward. They looked ghostly in the low light. ‘I own you heard the tail of my discussion. Mr Ellwood is, in truth, a very good papist. Or a very bad papist.’ He shrugged. ‘Yet I am none of him or his. No.’ He let his head dip forward a little. ‘I am, rather, a good son of England.’ He winked.

  ‘What do you … you are … yo
u’re informing on Ellwood?’

  ‘Mr Ellwood is well known.’

  ‘Not by the Vice Chancellor,’ countered Lewgar.

  ‘Perhaps not. Tyndall has all the wit and wisdom of a butchered hog and all the joy in tyranny of a Nero.’

  Petty treason, thought Lewgar, and worth reporting – though he couldn’t disagree with the sentiment. He chose discretion and kept his mouth shut.

  ‘I told you I serve a higher authority.’

  Realisation fell upon Lewgar like a heavy blanket. All of England knew that who the highest authorities were: Queen Elizabeth and the men who served her. All of them, every man at least, had a private army of intelligencers who were said to fly in and out of Catholic circles in false feathers, reporting on what they learnt of the papists’ plans. ‘Do you mean … her Majesty’s…? Sir Francis Wals-’ Lewgar had never seen the spymaster, but the man had become notorious in recent years as the head of the English intelligence network. His was a name to terrify and awe, more even than the vainglorious Earl of Leicester or the gouty old statesman Burghley.

  ‘A higher authority indeed,’ said Marlowe. He tapped the side of his small, soft nose.

  ‘You are in the service?’ Lewgar’s question came out on a wave of awe, fear, and surprise; they made a statement of it.

  ‘I serve my country,’ was all Marlowe gave him. He sat back down lightly, his legs spread apart, and put his elbows on his knees. ‘A man is shaped by two things. Viz: his will and his experiences. I find that – by my experiences of these sealed chambers,’ he waved vaguely to the room, ‘I find that I am disinclined to serve as a small-eyed clerk, translating ciphers … peering through spectacles. And by my will, I am inclined to roam the world and taste of its fruits. If I must invent a little, play a little … so be it.’

  ‘This – is this why you leave the college for weeks? Are you sent on…’ He trailed off, not knowing the right word. ‘Walsingham’s business?’

  Marlowe did not answer directly. In fact, his eyes darted away for a moment, into the deepest shadows of the room. And then they returned, crinkled with good humour. ‘Ah, you have missed me, then?’

  ‘I have noted your dereliction,’ said Lewgar coolly.

  ‘My dereliction, yes. A fine word. I like it. Would you like to know where it is I have gone? The things I see?’ This time Lewgar didn’t answer. Instead, he raised his chin. This didn’t seem to deter Marlowe. ‘It is a thing much noted in men. This desire to know. To see. You wish to know where I go and what I do. You wish to see the things I see.’

  ‘I see,’ said Lewgar, ‘that you’ve found Ellwood. Here. And found him to be a papist.’ Marlowe looked down at a cuff, the side of his lips working minutely as he straightened it. ‘Why, then he must be reported. Taken up. Plucked out, like a canker.’

  Marlowe looked up, his eyebrows still drawn together. ‘Plucked out? A fine image, sir. But I offer you another.’ He tilted back on the stool again. ‘Picture you a well,’ he said. ‘With two buckets – one going up and the other down. This college – all of Cambridge, rather – is such a well. Men come up here to turn others papist. Others go out from here infected with it. You see? Men in – men out.

  ‘Mr Ellwood stands at the top of the well, pulling the ropes. If he is cut out, we have one son of Rome in gaol.’

  ‘And rightly so – where he belongs!’ said Lewgar.

  ‘We have one. One. Yet, if we watch Mr Ellwood. If we are in his confidence, we might fill our gaols with a stream of corrupted souls. And we might know, too, what plots and complots they hatch. So, you see, it is a matter of winning one small prize or filling our coffers with golden knowledge.’

  Lewgar digested this, frowning. It made sense, certainly, however little he trusted Marlowe. Eventually, he said. ‘Yes. Yes, I see the wit in it. Though,’ he added, ‘I thought you of better ornamented speech than that. From wells to prizes and golden knowledge. I thought you considered yourself a poet, Marlowe.’

  Marlowe threw his head back and laughed – a rich, melodious tinkling. He wiped at one eye. ‘I own that. What can I say, sir? It is late.’ He yawned the truth of it and then stood, his hands already working at his doublet. ‘Like me, hate me, mock me, dispraise me. All as you will, Thomas. Yet I speak the truth. I should not go to my master with ill-formed Catholic cares. With only the fevered hopes of a lone papist student. I fancy I can do better service than that. I intend to see much, much more. And discover far, far more. And if we are sharing our hearts, I must insist that you call me Kit. I prefer it to Marlowe. Or Marlin, or Marley, or whatever mangling mingle any dull-eyed and thick-tongued scribe chooses to scribble me.’

  Lewgar stepped across the room and put the book on the desk. He squinted down, before adjusting it so that its side sat squarely against the edge of the desk. Kit, he thought. Something made him wish to sound it out, but he couldn’t. His feelings towards the fellow aside, he always found familiar, friendly names tasted odd in his mouth – like speaking a language in which he was inexpert, and amongst a world of native speakers. Odd, wrong, and apt to embarrass him in the speaking. Without turning, he said, ‘and what have you discovered? In your confidences with this creature?’

  For a moment the only sound was the unhooking of buttons, the slither of laces being loosened, and soft grunts. ‘Oh? They prattle endlessly on that old Scotch wench in her prison. Quite why they think freeing her will do their cause any good now I cannot say. The Scottish queen is old now. Spent.’

  Lewgar turned to find Marlowe in his shirt, bent over his open coffer, pulling forth streams of grey. As he tossed the nightshirt over his head, his muffled voice continued. ‘And they grow excited over the Spaniards. War. Tiresome stuff.’ His face popped out the collar as the shirt fell about his knees. ‘And this ship.’ He paused, chewing on the inside of a cheek. ‘The Sparrowhawk.’

  Lewgar had heard of it. At several recent noonday dinners, he’d sat alone as usual, but the inane chatter of his fellows had come to him. Before his spoon had even drawn up pottage, he’d heard the name. ‘The lost ship,’ he said.

  ‘Drake’s lost ship. Lost no more. It has washed up somewhere in Devon. Missing for years and found again.’

  Lewgar frowned. ‘Why should papists care a straw for an old ship? A wreck?’

  Marlowe smiled as he fixed a small white cap over his mess of hair. ‘Not for the ship. For the gold.’

  ‘Gold…’

  ‘Just so. Drake sailed home years ago with a treasure house on his Golden Hind. The Sparrowhawk was reckoned lost with its own great store of Spanish treasure. Amongst it they claim the Spaniards lost one mighty treasure. El Sol Dorado.’ His words turned, as he said the last, into something hard, something hungry.

  Lewgar repeated the name. It sounded rich for all its taint of Spanish. ‘Sol aureus,’ he said. Latin tempered it, gave it an air of majesty. ‘What is it?’

  ‘I cannot say. A vast sun carved of gold, perhaps? Worth much, anyway. Enough to fund warships. The papists think it theirs. I imagine our own sovereign lady thinks it hers.’ He shrugged. ‘Homines quod volunt credent.’

  ‘And rightly so. Her Majesty is right,’ said Lewgar.

  Marlowe shrugged and sprang onto the bed, throwing back the coverlet. He managed to do even that silently. ‘Are you coming to bed?’

  Lewgar gave a brief nod before beginning to undress. Marlowe had the grace to roll onto his side, facing the wall. ‘But … I heard them say – at dinner – I heard them call it a ghost ship. I heard no talk of treasure discovered.’

  ‘Mm.’

  Lewgar slipped out of his doublet and folded it neatly. ‘Then where is the treasure?’

  ‘Oh,’ said Marlowe. His voice came now from the small grey series of bumps he had become. ‘That I cannot say. The papists claim it without knowledge of it. No doubt our dear Queen Elizabeth wishes it. But where is it?’

  Opening his coffer and fetching his own nightshirt, Lewgar said, ‘ay, where?’

  ‘Well, that,
Thomas, is what I intend to discover.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘For the state. Do you think any man of the state wishes the Spanish to claim it to fund their wars on us? Things will be quiet here now that Easter passes. If you mean to become a more proper spy rather than a bumbling babe – if you mean to find work after our studies end … and if you are feeling gamesome, of course … come follow me.’

  3

  Blood coursed down the lad’s ravaged back. He had ceased screaming. His cries had descended to something baser, something more animal, gurgling in his throat and emerging from his drooping head in ragged, slobbering moans.

  ‘Enough, Fray Nicolas. For now.’ Henry Howton narrowed his eyes. Blood had pooled on the floor. The friar stood back from it, his small scourging whip dripping. The black leather strands did not show it, but they did show flecks of white flesh.

  Howton had spotted the boy – he was about sixteen – slouching about the vulgar little village when he had ridden into it to inspect the wreck. The lad had been amidst older companions then, all of them speaking languidly in their thick Devonshire accents, resting against one of the hovels. Howton had had Fray Nicolas lure the boy with offers of work, and he had come willingly enough. Only when he’d reached the garret room in his new employer’s lodgings had he realised something was amiss. But by then the friar was upon him. Howton himself had helped to tie the bindings that lashed the prisoner to the heavy oak coffer turned to stand on its end.

  And then the interrogation had begun.

  ‘Who found the ship?’

  ‘I dunno, honest, master!’

  ‘Who has raided it?’

  ‘I dunno! Please!’

  ‘Where is the treasure? Who has taken it? Which of you filthy country beasts has stripped that ship bare?’