The Queen's Gold: A Christopher Marlowe Spy Thriller

by Steven Veerapen

  ‘I dunno, I dunno, I dunno!’

  With nods to Fray Nicolas, Howton had sought to loosen the boy’s lips with lashes. All he had succeeded in doing was loosening his skin.

  He stepped through the blood. The house, though the finest in Wembury, wasn’t his – his gold had merely purchased the run of it for a few days from the doting old widow who owned it – and he cared nothing for its polished boards. He lifted the boy’s head under the chin; his skin was sun-browned, golden against Howton’s own white hand. ‘Tsk!’ The lad’s eyes were glazed, red from his tears.

  ‘He will not survive,’ said the friar. His eyelids were hooded and his face pallid.

  Howton let the boy’s head drop. His body fell with it, sliding against the coffer which was now streaked with blood. ‘Good. He stood longer than I would have thought. Finish him. And then rid us of the corpse.’ As he spoke, Howton fought to keep his voice under control. In truth, he was furious. Despite the whipping, they had learnt nothing from the fool beyond what they knew already: that the stricken vessel, thought lost in 1579 with – so it was rumoured – treasure aboard, had now emerged from the ocean in a storm. She was rotten, broken, and very, very empty. That much was known even in London, was whispered about in the scented halls and vaulted chambers of Queen Elizabeth’s court.

  And, naturally, the hedge-born Devonshire clodhoppers knew nothing, nothing, nothing. It was ever the war-cry of the backwards.

  He began scraping the heels of his shoes on the floorboards, roughly, violently, trying to let the swift movements take some of his anger with them. Wrath solved nothing. ‘Wait until the deepest part of the night,’ he said, when he felt calmer. He straightened his hat, giving the feather in it a twirl with his forefinger. Tilting back his head, he said, ‘ensure the creature is not found.’

  Fray Nicolas’s cheeks drew in. At length, he said, ‘I know, sir, how to be rid of heretics.’

  I’ll bet you do, thought Howton. The Spanish friar spoke excellent English, even managing a London accent, but he was nevertheless an agent of the imperial Philip. Fray Nicolas was, unfortunately, a part of the deal Howton had struck with the Spanish ambassador, Mendoza, just before the fool had been expelled from England. To be bought by the Spanish meant not just accepting their gold and vowing to do their bidding, but, thanks to old Philip’s tender conscience, accepting also attendance by a confessor.

  Howton was no fool, of course. He knew well enough that Fray Nicolas was a Spanish spy charged with ensuring that he kept up his end of the bargain. King Philip did not remain rich by handing out money to Englishmen without ensuring that they were worth the price.

  ‘Then be rid of him, Fray Nicolas. As you see fit.’

  The friar gave one hard nod. Howton shivered. The fellow had shown no emotion as he’d whipped the lad. That was nothing odd in itself; executioners showed no emotion as they did their grisly business. No – it was that Fray Nicolas never showed emotion in anything. Whatever feelings he had, if any, he kept them curtained behind his dark, scholarly robes and his dark, unblinking eyes. He questioned nothing. He simply went where his new master went, appearing, watching, demanding nightly confessions. Howton shivered again, turning away.

  He laboured under no illusions that the Spanish had chosen Nicolas as his watcher for his skills in the English language. The man had been an embarrassment in his native land – an extreme inquisitor better kept out of sight. Rather than taking exile in England as a rebuke, however, Fray Nicolas had evidently decided that the solution to being considered too extreme was to go still farther to prove zeal.

  That, at least, suited Henry Howton.

  As he stepped across the drier floorboards, he held up a hand to his face. The smell of blood in the room was strong. He had heard it described in the past as coppery. Rather, he thought, it was sharp, almost silvery. Chill blasts of air found their way into the room from holes in the eaves, opened up by the same storms that had cast the Sparrowhawk back up on the great rock beyond the little village.

  ‘Wait!’

  Fray Nicolas’s voice shot through the air like musket fire. Howton jumped, turning. ‘What?’

  The friar’s tall, thin form was bent over the boy, who was held up only by the cords of rope which looped around the coffer and bound his wrists. ‘He speaks!’

  Howton bounded across the little chamber in four steps. He considered grabbing the boy’s stringy brown hair and yanking his head backwards, demanding answers, but he might hasten death. Instead, he stepped around him and leant in. Sure enough, the fellow’s lips were moving. Blood bubbled up between them, popping, appearing russet in the light from the room’s small braziers.

  ‘What is it?’ whispered Howton. ‘Speak softly, boy, and we shall release you.’

  A whisper escaped the prisoner’s lips.

  Again, Howton leant in.

  ‘I’ lies …’

  ‘It lies where? The treasure – it lies where?’ he prodded.

  ‘With … Mary Rose.’

  Howton frowned. Mary Rose? He drew closer again, turning his head to the side and whispering, coaxing. ‘What do you say, lad? The treasure lies with Mary Rose?’ He pressed his ear close, very close, to the dying boy’s lips. ‘Go on.’

  The prisoner did.

  In one movement, one last burst of life, his head jerked. Howton’s scream split the bloody air. Pain shot through his ear as the lad’s teeth sank in, biting, clamping, tearing. ‘Kill him! Kill him!’

  Fray Nicolas did as he was told. Howton couldn’t see him, but he sensed the narrow column of darkness flaring behind him. He felt the boy’s body stiffen as it was struck from behind. Instantly, the pressure on his ear disappeared, though the pain remained. As the boy collapsed downward, Howton fell away. At his hand’s touch, sharp, tingling pain shot through the side of his head. His fingers came away bloody.

  ‘The bastard! He – he gulled you! It hurts, by Christ!’ He kicked the fallen boy hard, and then again, until he felt and heard the crunch of bones. ‘Bastard!’ And then he stepped back. ‘I bleed! He has drawn blood!’

  Fray Nicolas, expressionless as ever, drew out a linen handkerchief from his robes and held it out. ‘Press it. Hard. And keep it pressed.’

  Howton snatched it and staunched his own blood. ‘You said he was dying. He gulled you.’

  ‘He is dead now.’ The friar spat on the boy’s body – now a bundle of tattered, bloody breeches and white flesh suspended just above the floor. His spittle glistened.

  ‘He drew you with nonsense. Mary Rose.’

  ‘There is no one of such a name?’ asked Fray Nicolas.

  ‘I …’ The name, in fact, sounded familiar, but he couldn’t place it. He repeated it to himself. Yes, Mary Rose. He knew it. Yet, with his head bleeding and the pain flaring with each heartbeat, he couldn’t think. ‘I will think on it,’ he said. ‘Be rid of this scum.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Still clutching the handkerchief – now feeling wet and sticky – to his ear, he clattered across the floorboards and out of the garret room. A narrow flight of stone steps lay beyond the door and he descended, cursing the tears which nipped their way out of his eyes. He was a man not given to tears but, he reasoned, even the strongest creature might weep for pain when a tender part is wounded.

  The Mary Rose?

  At the foot of the stairs lay an old-fashioned solar chamber, with painted cloth hangings, sideboards with pewter plate, cushioned benches around the walls, and a good carved fireplace. A woman was bent over the latter, stirring up the flames. Next to her was a trivet over a coal-filled brazier, a dish of pork warming atop it. The place was fine enough, for a parochial country house. It was, however, a pathetic hovel compared to his London lodgings. Out in Devon, as in most places in the English shires, time seemed to have stood still. The few windows were narrow, mean, made of horn, giving the place a sightless look from the outside.

  If this task paid off, if he found the treasure, he would have the old widow put
out and the wretched place razed to the ground. Nowhere he had been attacked should be allowed to stand, its walls bearing mute testament to his shame at the teeth of a country bumpkin. A dead country bumpkin, he corrected himself with some satisfaction.

  ‘Tend me, Bess,’ he barked. ‘I bleed.’

  The woman, startled, nearly tripped over her skirts as she wheeled. ‘I’m sorry, sir,’ she said. ‘I didn’t hear you. Over the flames.’

  ‘Tend me,’ he snapped. She crossed the rush matting to him, her eyes roving over the handkerchief pressed at the side of his head. Her soft fingers closed around his wrist, easing away his hand.

  Bess was his. He had found the wench in a tavern London, bought her, and made her his own. Any spark of fire in her, any traces of women’s deceit – those he daily laboured to scrub from her. Promises, he found, worked best. Telling a stupid London lass that one day she might have polished beads and pretty periwigs – that she might one day be the mistress of her own house – was enough to stifle any will of her own. To Howton she was, like most women – and most men, in fact – a whore. Everybody had a price; it was simply that some were cheaper than others.

  Yet her touch was, indeed, soft. It was not unpleasant to keep a woman. He allowed himself a little pride in her. She had been a rose amongst the thorns when he’d found her. Pure, untouched, too, he’d supposed – then at least.

  ‘You was struck?’

  ‘Were, Bess.’ He frowned. She ought to have learnt by now how to pass as a lady. He’d instructed her well enough. ‘I was.’

  She wrinkled her pretty features. ‘That’s what I said, sir.’ He hissed as she dabbed. ‘I’m sorry, sir. I’ll – I’ll heat some water. Clean it. Please, sir, sit.’

  He did, moodily staring into the fire as she warmed the water in a tin bowl on the trivet and passed him the warm dish of pork. He threw it to the floor. Hunger was far from his mind. ‘I’ll tend to that later, sir,’ she said.

  As she came towards him with the warm water, her skirts brushing the rushes, the door at the top of the stone steps banged open. Both their heads turned up. Fray Nicolas had wrapped the boy’s corpse in sackcloth and was carrying it as though it was weightless. He passed down the stairs in silence.

  Howton ignored him, watching Bess instead. It was difficult to tell in the cheerful light from the fire, but he thought he saw her face pale. She was thinking, the saucy mare – a habit he’d tried to drum out of her. A few strands of blonde hair had escaped her coif. He reached up and brushed one with a finger, drawing her attention back to him.

  Yes, he thought – she was scared. She knew he and the friar had taken a prisoner up there and must have heard the screams.

  Good.

  Women were, by their nature, deceivers. She would think twice now before she ever deceived him.

  She said nothing but began dipping a square of linen in the hot water and dabbing at his bloody ear, as though there had been no interruption. He winced, making her jump. ‘Just go to, Bess – go to. I am not troubled by a bite to the ear.’ Strange that he should feel the need to appear manly before his trull.

  ‘A bite,’ she echoed. Again, that look of fear crossed her face and was quickly suppressed. Another door thudded, as Fray Nicolas went about his business. She finished cleaning and then tore a fresh strip of linen into a bandage, tying it round his head.

  ‘Is this needed?’ he asked. She nodded. The burning pain at the tip of his earlobe agreed and he decided not to press the matter. Taking a deep breath, he said, ‘tell me, Bess – have you ever heard the name “Mary Rose”?’

  ‘The Mary Rose?’

  He leant forward. She rocked back, straightening up. ‘Yes,’ he hissed. That was the same inflection he’d heard in his head. It fit the name.

  ‘Course I have, sir. The great ship.’

  It fell into place. Or rather it sank into place. Howton cursed. ‘The Mary Rose,’ he echoed, more to himself than her.

  ‘I knew a lad – before I knew you, sir – whose grand-sire sank with the Mary Rose. That’s what he told me. His grand-sire went down with the Mary Rose.’

  Howton closed his eyes. Of course he had heard of the ship. Off Portsmouth, it had gone down, long before he’d been born – in the time of Queen Elizabeth’s father, Henry VIII. It was a well-known tale, how the great ship had been overburdened, how it had carried hundreds of sailors to their deaths before the old king’s eyes. The dead lad had made sport of him as he’d been dying. If the treasure of the Sparrowhawk lay with the Mary Rose, that meant it was at the bottom of the sea, beyond any man’s grasp. His Spanish backers would not wish to hear that – although they might prefer it to knowing the lost gold was in Elizabeth’s coffers.

  Yet … yet…

  If the treasure was sunk, why and how did the ship return to Wembury? It was hard to believe that someone might have raided the Sparrowhawk, sunk its loot, and then sunk it separately, to be carried ashore by the heavy seas.

  No, the boy had been sporting with him. Hoping to thwart him. He chose to believe this, because he wished to believe it. If he and Fray Nicolas had to discover more from these secretive, thick-headed country louts, so be it.

  He opened his eyes. And then he narrowed them.

  Bess still stood before him. Swift as a bullet, his hand shot out and grasped her wrist. ‘Oh!’ she cried, half-stepping away. He tightened his grip, crushing her tiny bones. He imagined he could feel her pulse through the thin gauzy cuffs blossoming from her sleeves.

  ‘Who is this lad? Which lad did you take to your bed before I allowed you into mine, you pox-ridden whore?’

  He wrenched hard on her wrist, using it to gain his feet.

  Bess cowered away from him, pleading with her eyes. He smiled as he stepped towards her.

  4

  Two questions repeated in Lewgar’s mind as he rode: why had he come and why had Marlowe wished him to? They had dogged him on every step of the journey, circling in his mind like birds, first one pecking and then the other. In answer to the first, he’d told himself he must keep an eye on his bedfellow. For all his lofty claims of working for Walsingham and infiltrating the Catholic circle at Cambridge, Lewgar only partly believed and still wholly distrusted him.

  It occurred to him, indeed, that he might find better means of ridding the college of its errant poesy-peddler if he feigned friendship and accompanied him on his wanderings, arming himself along the way with evidence of Marlowe’s waywardness and indolence. Friendship was an easy enough thing to counterfeit. As long as they rode together, they were in unspoken alliance, ranged against the craft of tavern keepers and fellow travellers with suspicious eyes and potentially sticky fingers. And nothing forged the appearance of a bond better than passing together through wild woods and byways fashioned by nature for mischief.

  It was not, of course, that the fellow’s tale of lost gold had intrigued him. And besides, as the Vice Chancellor had pointed out, it was quite permissible for Master’s students to go out into the world at their will, provided they still attended their required examinations.

  As to the second question: why had the supposed spy craved his company? It was possible that he might be luring him away to deliver him to a nest of papists, or to kill him out in the country. Everything Marlowe had told him about working for a higher authority might have been a lie, a ruse to lure him away from the college and silence him. He chose to disregard this, for obvious reasons – though at every inn they stopped at, he kept a knife close to hand and slept little.

  It was possible, too, that the fellow simply didn’t wish him left at the college, with his headful of secrets and suspicions and easy access to the Vice Chancellor.

  The alternative – and this he sensed was correct – was that Marlowe was inherently unable to accept a man’s dislike. The fellow had decided, for whatever reason, to win him over. This solution had the benefit of being unlikely to result in his murder. And it seemed in keeping with the man, who liked the sound of his own voice and seem
ed eager to be thought of as a great friend to all.

  At any rate, Lewgar had come. Marlowe had used his credit – or the college’s credit – to provide a pair of jennets in the town, and they had taken the long road from Cambridge through the flat landscape towards London, and from the smoky sprawl of the metropolis onto the southwest highway through Guildford and Petersfield. The journey had been surprisingly pleasant, despite the initial aches it brought. There had been a time each day for rising, a time for dressing, for riding out, for resting to eat, riding again, resting. It had given a pleasant, orderly shape to the days.

  Throughout, Marlowe had spoken of ‘taking an adventure’, working himself up into a good-natured state of excitement. It was, admittedly, somewhat infectious. Despite the grubby inns – only London, it seemed, boasted of beds with linens untouched since the laundress had tended them – Lewgar felt his own excitement build. Marlowe, he found, talked a great deal, mostly of the opportunities poetry offered in expressing the sciences of optics and natural philosophy in ways that even fools might understand. It was refreshing, too, to be away from the stultifying life of the college, with its daily round of solo dining amidst the company of students, droning lectures, and evenings spent squinting at books by candlight.

  It was being out in the world.

  It was taking an adventure.

  And it was not wholly unpleasant, despite that plaguing dirtiness of parochial inns.

  The only troubling thing – and an odd thing it was – was that Marlowe had revealed almost nothing of himself or his master. For a boastful man who enjoyed the sound of his own voice, he seemed careful to reveal only what he wished known – that he was an admirer of the classical poets; that he was fond of disputation but found the college inhibited free thinking; that taking adventure was the only sure guard against becoming old and staid and corrupted by idleness. That iron control over what he revealed, Lewgar supposed, must have been a boon in intelligence work.

  They were bound for the little village of Wembury, on the Devonshire coast. In London, where they had spent a night, Marlowe had slipped out of the inn to fetch them some small beer and had been gone for some hours. When he had returned from wherever he went, he was bright-eyed and smiling, with the name of the place on his lips. Lewgar had asked if he’d been to visit some intermediary of his master – for surely it was Walsingham – and received only a wink and another tap on the side of his partner’s button nose.