The Queen's Gold: A Christopher Marlowe Spy Thriller

by Steven Veerapen

  ‘B’gar,’ said one of the men. ‘It’s murder to be sure, Edward.’

  ‘Ay,’ said the other, apparently the more laconic of the two.

  For what seemed an eternity, both constables stared down at the body. Then one of them, Edward, shrugged. ‘Take ’em up.’

  ‘We have done nothing. We are innocent!’ Lewgar had found his voice, but he found it querulous, sounding false in his own ears.

  ‘Innocent, says he – “we are innocent”, and hark at him’ said the first constable, adopting a mockery of a university accent. Lewgar raised his hands, drawing frowns from the pair, who slid their batons off their shoulders. ‘Don’t be thinking about giving us no trouble, wretch. You’ll be the worse for it.’

  ‘Let us go with the constables,’ said Marlowe, behind him, his voice low and measured. ‘Quietly. In peace.’

  ‘Ay,’ said the constable. ‘Hark at your little friend there, murderer. Come in peace and quietly.’

  Both Lewgar and Marlowe did, each gripped by an arm by one of the two lawmen. Lewgar knew all about petty constables – he had heard them laughed at even in his boyhood at Wymondham. Elected – or impressed – by their fellow citizens, the creatures were known to be lazy, bumbling, and always eager to take the easiest route. No constable he’d ever heard of was known for a questing mind. If the old jest ran that the law was a dull, heavy battering ram, constables were laughing, foolish children who sat a-straddle on it.

  Out of the room they went, Marlowe carefully closing the door behind him, and so along the gallery. Towards the steps leading down to the innyard, other doors opened, and coiffed and hatted heads popped out, staring, frowning, judging, hissing.

  Lewgar felt shame sear a path across his cheeks, down his neck. He wanted to scratch himself, but the constable was still gripping his arm, fingers digging through the sleeve, through the linen of his shirt. Leaving a mark, he thought, trying to focus his mind on anything but what was happening.

  Because it couldn’t really be happening.

  The whole previous couple of weeks could not have happened, not really. He was not a man of venturesome nature. He was a vicar’s son, educated at Cambridge, studying for his Master’s degree.

  His father’s voice, stentorian and full of admonition, sounded in his head. These were the fruits of giving in to temptation. This was the reward for following a false prophet like Marlowe, for being seduced by wild tales of adventure, for letting foolery about gold and spiery turn him from honest study. And now where would he end up? On a gallows, spat at and jeered. Worse – before even that, in a gaol – a gaol in Southwark no less!

  Their captors showed no sign of affording them modesty. Rather than taking them discreetly through the archway to the street, they made for the doorway into the taproom. Lewgar kept his head down.

  A chorus of jeers rose as they were dragged into the gloom. The young man who had accosted them on their arrival, pretending to be a student, swept up loaded dice and receded into the shadows. Less shady men and women were clustered by the fire, shielding it, looking wraithlike and wicked.

  ‘Murderers!’

  ‘Monsters!’

  ‘Unnatural!’

  ‘Burn ’em!’

  ‘It is as you said,’ announced the talkative constable. ‘A man slain in these men’s sealed chamber. And the lads flown back to conceal their doings.’

  Lewgar’s head jerked up; he felt his features twisting into rage now – an antidote to the shame. The tapster, Hillyard, was standing behind his bar. Before it stood the woman Joan, whom he himself had sent packing the day they’d arrived. Triumph ruled her features. ‘There, you see, I said they was bad ’uns, both.’ She looked towards the group by the fire. ‘You see? Talk fair but have daggers in their breeches.’ She turned back to Hillyard, who had the grace to look down at the bar. ‘You was right.’

  ‘We have done nothing,’ said Lewgar. Behind him, Marlowe gave a low hiss.

  ‘We’ll take ’em up. Give ’em to the gallows.’ The constable tightened his grip as he spoke. A bolt of fear shot through Lewgar and was gone. He didn’t think they’d be hanged, not really. There remained a semblance of justice and order, surely – even in Southwark. No, rather there would be messages sent to Cambridge to confirm their identities. The Vice Chancellor – someone – would do something for them.

  And then they would be freed.

  And then they would be dismissed from the college.

  And then he would find every door barred to him.

  The name Thomas Lewgar, son of the vicar of Wymondham, would be forever linked to a grubby slaying in a low inn in London’s dirt-spattered underbelly.

  ‘Forgive me, sirs.’ The voice was soft – it broke in on Lewgar’s thoughts, uncreasing his brow. He looked up and his heart fluttered with shame and curiosity. It was a woman, who had stepped from the shadows of the taproom. He recognised the dark hair curling below her coif, the sedate dress and ruff – she was the pretty woman who he’d thought to impress when barrelling through the taproom with the prisoner the day before. She moved between tables in a rustle of skirts, coming to stand before the constables and their prisoners. She was young, perhaps about twenty, with a delicately powdered face.

  ‘Eh?’ said Marlowe’s constable, Edward. ‘oo are you?’

  ‘My name is Cecily Gage. Daughter to Richard Gage.’ Lewgar had never heard of him, and neither, it seemed, had the constables. But the woman stood, a little haughtily, one hand on her hip. ‘These men – they’re taken up for murder?’

  ‘Ay, woman. Murder.’

  ‘But – I…’ She seemed momentarily unmoored and chanced a hesitant frown towards Hillyard. ‘It is the room upstairs, yes?’ She got no answer and turned again to the constables. ‘I saw another man coming from that room. As I came into the yard some while ago. He stopped awhile to wash his hands at the horse trough yonder. The water – it turned red.’

  ‘What is this?’ asked Edward.

  ‘I saw a man,’ she repeated. ‘A dark man. Look of a foreigner about it. All in black, like a clerk. He was washing blood from his hands. It was neither of these men.’

  The first constable shrugged, looking beyond her. ‘You know of any other man coming through ’ere, ’illyard?’

  ‘I know nothing. Save I heard that some wicked deed passed up there. From an honest friend.’

  Liar! Lewgar’s mouth fell open as he realised what must have happened. Hillyard the tapster had evidently been paid off by the true assassin. That assassin was the creature who had been chasing them, who had paid the poor Francis – or whatever his real name was – to attack them, and who had now silenced the fellow.

  ‘It’s true, it’s true,’ he began. ‘We are being hunted by a strange man, a stranger to us – he – he set the dead man upon us and killed him and – and that tapster, he is bought and paid for and – and…’ He trailed off. What use – what use here? Even in his own head, he sounded like a raving madman, all trace of genteel argument whipped away by hysteria. He closed his mouth, looking again at the woman, Cecily Gage. He swallowed. ‘Madam, I thank you. You have seen the murderer who would have us punished for his deed. His wicked deed.’

  ‘Enough of this,’ said his constable, now using his nail to dig into Lewgar’s arm.

  ‘Ay,’ said Edward.

  ‘Let’s get ’em across the road, Ed. And then we might return and have a drink.’ He threw a look at Cecily. ‘And ’ear no more of women’s false witness.’

  Lewgar was nearly jerked off his feet, despite his captor being smaller. The whole party was off again, clattering through the taproom. Cecily Gage was pushed roughly aside.

  Out through the front door, they found themselves dragged through the darkness the short distance across the street, to the forbidding, cheerless White Lion, the former inn turned Queen’s service as a gaol. Its barred windows were all in darkness. Round the side of the building, up a narrow lane between it and the neighbouring great house used by visiting justice
s, an archway opened into its own courtyard. This one was guarded by a rusted portcullis. Lewgar’s captor released his grip and beat on the iron with his baton. At length, a man on the other side called back, ‘up she goes,’ and the gate lifted, just enough for the four men to duck under it. When they had gained the other side, it hit the cobbles with a screech.

  The yard itself was not unlike the one at The Tabard – not unlike any number of innyards. Braziers stood at regular intervals around it, casting a weak glow up to the former lodging rooms which had been converted, presumably, to cells. Now that they were trapped, the two constables released them. Lewgar turned to Marlowe, his eyes wide. His friend, in the weak light, looked more annoyed than frightened; his eyes were narrowed to slits.

  The surly Edward marched off, his baton again over his shoulder, to a door in the block of the building facing the street. He returned almost immediately, a weedy little man at his back. The fellow was wearing a pair of spectacles, pinched over the bridge of his nose. Skirting Edward, he came to stand before them, his hands clasped behind his back.

  ‘Late,’ he said, ‘for new guests.’ He looked annoyed, little lines forming above his upper lip.

  ‘Two murderers,’ said Lewgar’s constable. ‘Taken in the act, near to. Returning to the body.’

  ‘Murder!’ said the spectacled man. ‘Oh dear.’ He gave his head a shake, as though to clear it. The hot, spicy nip of wine wafted from him. ‘Well, you’ve done a service, good fellows.’ This to the constables. ‘You may go.’ The pair smirked, gave short bows, and took off across the courtyard, into the chamber their superior had come from. They left the door open; light spilled out, not quite reaching them. When they were alone, the man said, ‘I serve as warden of the house.’ He didn’t say ‘gaol’, Lewgar noticed. ‘My name is Robert Marris.’ His accent was that of a gentleman, though his speech was a little slurred. Evidently he had been interrupted during a quiet, pleasant evening of private good cheer. Yet there seemed nothing malicious in him. Probably he had a fairly easy job, housing drunks and brawlers. ‘You will tell me yours.’

  ‘William Gillingham,’ said Marlowe, before Lewgar could speak.

  Marris nodded, smiling. ‘And you?’

  ‘I…’ Lewgar blinked. Licked his lips. ‘I’m … my name is … Mercator! Francis Mercator.’ He could almost feel Marlowe’s amused gaze burning into him. Lying to a warden! And lying badly.

  ‘You lack the voice of a stranger,’ said Marris, laconically. He shrugged. ‘It is late. You will be lodged here for the night and we shall proceed further in the morning. Come, please.’

  The unlikely warden led them across the courtyard, to a door on the ground floor, facing northward towards the Thames. He fished a ring of keys from a loop at his belt and pushed it opened. ‘Inside, please.’

  Marlowe led the way, stepping easily. Lewgar’s own boots dragged. Marris followed them in, and even produced a tinderbox and lit a candle. It threw up a meagre bloom of light, illuminating the cell. In former times, the place might have served as a storeroom – it was not one of the old inn’s lodging chambers. A board set atop an empty box served as a table, but otherwise there was no furniture. The only window was high on the exterior stone wall – it was low and barred and admitted not even a shaft of moonlight.

  ‘I suggest you sleep and think on God’s grace,’ said Marris. ‘Goodnight.’ He shuffled from the room, pulling the door closed. There followed a jingle and the snick of a lock being turned.

  Silence ticked over the cell for a few moments. Lewgar threw off his hat and sank to his knees. ‘Imprisoned!’ he said. ‘Gaoled!’

  Marlowe did not seem infected by his despair. ‘Francis Mercator?’ he asked, laughter dancing in his voice.

  ‘Be quiet! You – this is your fault! Pulling me into this. You!’

  ‘I bid you come follow me if you would. You did.’

  Lewgar stood his ground. ‘Follow you, yes. Not into this. This!’

  ‘I own I … I did not envision this.’ Marlowe’s eyes rolled up to the cobweb-covered ceiling. ‘No. I did not.’ He returned his gaze to Lewgar. ‘Why did you come? Why did you, Thomas Lewgar, my lord of good sense?’

  ‘I…’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I … wished to do good service. You said you were in the Queen’s service. I wished to … to help.’

  ‘Why?’

  Lewgar locked eyes with him. ‘I’ve told you.’

  ‘Be honest, Thomas. We have ridden side by side long enough for that. Why are you so hot for her Majesty’s service, then?’

  Biting at his lip, Lewgar looked at the floor. ‘My … my grandfather was burned. In the old Queen Mary’s reign. I know well enough that men of the present government look to protect us from papistry and its evils.’ His voice took on the tone and timbre of his father’s. ‘I know that Sir Francis Walsingham and his friends employ men in matters of security. I wished to help.’

  ‘Is that what you seek? After you graduate – to be a servant of the state?’

  ‘I – yes. To do some honest service.’ He emphasised the ‘honest’.

  ‘Heh. And so spiery tickles you. Educated men…’ Marlowe put his back against one of the interior plaster walls and sank to the floor, his knees rising. He put his hands on them. ‘We are taught to dispute and rattle enthymemes. It makes us poor politicians. Poor creatures for state service. And yet … good politicians must be spies, chameleons … able to counterfeit being on the same side as every man they speak with.

  ‘Are you sure you are not locked in here, now, because you wished to counterfeit being on my side? To spy upon me? And not just a little to take adventure?’

  Lewgar did not respond at first. He felt colour rise in his cheeks. And then hope washed it away. ‘Sir Francis! Your master. Sir Francis Walsingham. He won’t stand for one of his men being – being accused, locked up, for something he didn’t do. You must get word to him, Marlowe, write him, write him now.’

  Marlowe leant his head back against the wall and closed his eyes. ‘Write? With what?’

  ‘In the morning, then. Tell that man, that Marris – tell him who you serve.’

  Again, Marlowe seemed unmoved. He took a long breath. ‘Not a good stratagem.’

  ‘What? Why?’

  ‘Because…’ Marlowe opened his eyes, leant forward, and ran both hands through his hair. ‘I know a man – Poley.’ At the name, Lewgar’s spine stiffened.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘A servant of Walsingham. Sometimes.’ Again, his head tilted upwards. ‘He spent some space of time in the Marshalsea, down the street. Ah, a year or so back.’

  ‘And? And what – did Walsingham get him out?’

  ‘Walsingham put him there, Thomas.’ Lewgar only shook his head, not understanding. It seemed unfathomable, impossible, that Marlowe wouldn’t wish to use his connections to free them. ‘Poley was placed there to listen to what the imprisoned papists whispered. To dig into their minds. Their secrets.’ He thudded a fist on the packed-earth floor. ‘Sir Francis Walsingham puts men in gaol when it pleases him. He doesn’t get them out. An intelligencer who gets himself into danger is a man on his own. Or men on their own.’

  Lewgar, for his part, turned away. His mind simply refused to accept it. He could not believe that, with a connection to the court, to a great man of the state, they would not be rescued. They had done nothing wrong; they were, in fact, the victims. It was unthinkable, it was impossible, that a great man would not intercede for them.

  ‘We cannot hope for men of state to save us,’ said Marlowe, resignation heavy in his voice. He gave a humourless little laugh. ‘We cannot trust authorities. No. Look at our new warden. Marked him for an appointed man, myself, placed in authority.’ The word came with a hard edge. ‘From birth we are made to trust such creatures. Our parents tell us what to think, and our vicars and ministers, and our schoolmasters and governors.’ He looked up. ‘And you, I think are an empty vessel for them all.’

  Stung, Lew
gar snapped, ‘and you? You, Kit Marlowe?’

  ‘Ah. Ah, now me. In me, their teachings do churn. I am not a good vessel.’ His voice drifted, becoming faraway. ‘And so you followed me out of good honest zeal to serve the Queen. I do not believe you.’

  ‘What does it matter?’ Lewgar was wearying of the conversation. And then his hands, which he’d balled, relaxed. ‘Perhaps,’ he said, ‘perhaps a little to spy on you.’

  ‘To have me ejected from the college, I think, Thomas.’

  ‘Perhaps a little to spy on you. But why did you invite me on this madness?’ There, he thought; Marlowe deserved a little of his own pointless interrogation.

  ‘I thought you a good subject.’

  ‘For what?’

  Marlowe shrugged, rearranging the bunched doublet at his back. ‘I marked you as a man with two wills. Cowardice and curiosity. Strange and turbulent bedfellows. I wished to see which had mastery of you.’

  Bastard! Lewgar thought. Cowardice, indeed!

  Ignoring the insult, which Marlowe had delivered quite calmly, Lewgar asked, ‘then what do we do? What do we do?’

  His mind roiled and leapt. It searched for the warm embrace of Latin, with its orderly conjugations and echoes of safe halls and quadrangles and the far gentler discipline of the schoolroom.

  In dubio, abstine.

  When in doubt, do nothing.

  No comfort there.

  Marlowe yawned. ‘It will take some time. For a jury to be empanelled, for them to decide whether we ought to be sent to trial. What is this – Hilary Term – Easter Term now? Ha! Perhaps they will have us at the muster and sent to die in the Low Countries.’ He let out a whistling breath. ‘Well, this is hardly the Tullianum.’ He rolled his eyes about the cell. ‘I suggest we think on escape. Do not men imprisoned falsely have a right to freedom?’ His voice has become that of college disputation. ‘Alas, but it is easier to do things in the mind than in the flesh.’

  Lewgar stepped over to the stone wall, just beneath the little window. Cold air washed down over him. He felt it sting his face, bringing tears. Jury … trial … escape. These were words that ought to have been alien to him – the language of lawmen on the one side and cutthroats and footpads on the other. Escape was punishable by death, even in cases of wrongful imprisonment. If they tried to break free, if they resisted being taken up falsely for a crime, they would be committing a capital one. He blinked away the tears. Faintly, on the wall before him, he saw that someone had dug words into the plaster. ‘Marris ys an drunken cunt’. He shook his head clear of it, of everything, as he collapsed to the floor himself.