‘Justice,’ she said. ‘He murdered their boy. I know it. I know. And those other men. I … I owe them right justice.’ He continued staring, feeling his mouth gape. And then she had his hand in hers. ‘I’m sorry I lied to you. But I’m making it – making it right.’
‘Right!?’
He shook free of her. And then he took her hand instead and began dragging her out into the street. He meant to take her up to the house, to warn Marlowe and the Widow Benham about what might be coming.
It was a foolish move.
The townspeople seemed to take their departure for the house as a general call to arms, a leading of the charge. A chorus exploded behind them.
‘Burn him!’
‘Hang him!’
‘Justice!’
‘Sweet Jesus,’ said Lewgar. He gripped Bess’s hand more tightly and they began to jog, and then to run. The people thundered along behind them, up the lane, up the rise, onto the gravel which circled the old building.
The pair led the marauding people in. ‘Quick,’ said Lewgar. He led Bess up the stairs, jerking right. Behind them, the entrance hall filled with rage, with the hoarse cries and shouts of the people.
Marlowe was half in the doorway to the bathing chamber. Surprise was written on his face. Before he could speak, Lewgar cried, ‘into the bedchamber – get the widow – get the woman!’ He flew down the hall, kicking the door open and throwing Bess in. She went down in a whirl of skirts. He opened his mouth to speak, but was buffeted by Marlowe, who was dragging the Widow Benham by the arm. Once they had gained the bedroom, Lewgar threw the door shut. Its key was nestled in the lock and he threw it, exhaling relief at the soft click.
Through the door came the cries and yells. He turned to the three faces in the bedchamber, holding a finger to his lips. The shouts coming in from beyond rose in pitch. They changed to shrieks of delight. ‘They’ve found him,’ he said. His voice was hollow. ‘They … they know that he killed one of their lads. Is … Howton – did it work? Is he in the pit?’
Marlowe stepped forward, leaving Bess and the Widow Benham to sit on the treasure-filled, iron-banded coffer which sat at the foot of the bed. ‘He was,’ he said. He wasn’t smiling. ‘If they can get him out of there, they can have him. It shall save us the labour.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Mobs. I recall … when I was a boy … the Huguenots seeking refuge in Canterbury. With their tales.’ He said no more. An intense, faraway look took hold of his features.
Bess began speaking to the Widow Benham, who seemed quite unperturbed. Explaining what she’d done, Lewgar supposed. He turned and put his ear to the door. Mobs of people could turn crazed; they might turn the place over, steal. He tried to chart the dim march of their progress. Jeers rose again. Everything fell to angry argument.
And then a high, piercing scream.
His blood ran cold.
The jeering rose again, this time to an animal pitch.
He’s dead, he thought. They’ve had their justice.
And now what will they do? What had Bess unleashed?
But a muffled voice soared above the din – a man’s voice – shouting. He couldn’t make out what it was saying. But the wild euphoria of mob murder dampened. Instead, the voices sank to a low hum. And then they fell further, they lessened.
The crowd, the mob, was departing. He didn’t tell the others at first. He waited to see if he was right, turning his back to the door. Marlowe remained standing, his head bent. The women still sat on the coffer, the Widow Benham’s feet dangling in inch above the floor’s rushes. There was a clock in the stone-walled room – a heavy, carved affair which sat on a sideboard. It wasn’t yet nine by it. The whole, fair bedchamber was unchanged from what it had been – unruffled by whatever had taken place beyond its walls.
‘Wait here,’ said Lewgar.
He unlocked the door, the turn of the key sounding like a gunshot in the still air. Easing it open, he glanced down the gallery.
Empty.
He slid out, drawing the door closed behind him. A little voice in his head cautioned him to get back to safety, to turn the lock. He ignored it. He ignored, too, the sudden speeding of his heart, and forced his legs to carry him down the hall. Pausing at the entrance to the bathing room, he looked in.
It was still, dim, lit only by the small, arrow-shaped windows cut high into the wall above.
Continuing on, he felt his left foot give. ‘Oop!’ His hand flew to the wall, steadying him. He had nearly slipped. The floorboard was streaked with thin tongues of blood. He blinked, shaking away the sudden murder of crows which seemed to have invaded his head and which were circling it, darting at his brain. The trail of blood continued onwards, towards the solar. He stood a moment, irresolute, and then forced himself onwards.
The solar was bathed in light.
A window on the left, facing the front of the house, had been thrown open. Otherwise, the place was in order, save the ruffling up of the carpets underfoot. He stepped over the bumps, ignoring the yawning cavern of the room, and making for that open window.
Blinking into the morning sunlight, he bent out.
The first thing he was the old steward, John. ‘Is the widow unharmed?’ He cried up, a hand cupped to his mouth.
Lewgar put his hands on the lower lintel. ‘She is well. We saw to her safe–’ Lewgar’s mouth remained open, but no further sound came out. His right hand had landed on something, something hard and vaguely round. He looked down, directly down. There, tied to a projecting lip of stone, was a knot of rope. Below that was a halo of blonde, matted with darkness. Hanging there was the body of Howton, his blood dripping from what must have been stab wounds to the gravel below, where it blended with the still-damp stone.
‘I’ll have the boys cut him down before he troubles the widow,’ shouted the steward. ‘Boys’ll be rid of the murderous bastard, now they’ve had justice.’
Lewgar managed to give a hard nod before backing away from the window. His head down, his nerve having fled, he raced back the way he’d come, falling into the bedchamber. Slamming the door behind him, he looked at Bess. In a trembling voice, he said, ‘they’ve had their justice.’
She nodded, her face without expression. ‘Good.’
After a moment, the widow rocked forward, off of the coffer. ‘Well,’ she said. ‘You’ve done me a service. That fellow had wickedness writ about him.’
‘A wild kind of justice,’ said Marlowe, looking up. He was standing exactly where he had been when Lewgar had left. ‘Ay, I recall hearing what a crowd roused to anger can do. Is it…’
‘The steward will see the local men … make it right.’
‘Good John,’ said the Widow Benham. She clapped her hands. ‘Well … what now? You have the gold you sought.’
‘What?’ asked Marlowe.
‘The gold,’ she said, kicking at the coffer. ‘You have it. You found it.’
‘We’re no thieves, Mistress Benham,’ said Lewgar. ‘We’ve not come to rob you.’
‘I’ve no use for it. I told you, I can’t change it.’ Her manner changed. ‘I only ask that you don’t report to your masters. To whoever sent you. It wouldn’t … I mean no threat.’ Her little hands rose. ‘It wouldn’t go well for you if you think to go to the Queen.’
Lewgar’s brow wrinkled in confusion.
‘What do you mean, mistress?’ asked Marlowe.
She shrugged. ‘The whole matter is … if you wish to take the gold, keep it for yourselves, there’s no need to tell anyone, is there?’
Lewgar straightened. What she was proposing was that they creep off with their pockets full, and report nothing of what they’d discovered to Sir Francis Walsingham or any other man of the state.
Why?
Surely not to protect herself and certainly not to protect her husband, who had gone on to answer to God.
He thought of what she’d said earlier, when they’d first spoken with her in the solar.
Drake.
‘You wish t
he matter huddled up?’ asked Marlowe.
‘Me? It’s … it’s not me.’
‘And you insist you know nothing of El Sol Dorado?’
Lewgar rolled his eyes to the ceiling beams. Marlowe would not let the mythical treasure go. He had asked, of every gold piece, of every candlestick, of every pearl and ruby and gold-framed emerald, ‘is this the great treasure the Spanish king cries upon?’
The widow Benham again nudged the coffer with her foot. ‘You would relieve me of a burden in taking some.’ She looked at Bess and gave her a mischievous smile. ‘You, young woman. You might find yourself a house. Buy yourself an alehouse and set up shop. You’d have the freedom of a widow without the trouble of a husband.’
Bess shook her head. ‘I – I couldn’t.’ She looked at Marlowe, and then her gaze came to rest on Lewgar. ‘Or perhaps … to give some to the folks who lost their boy to … him. And to old Mistress Byrd. But … but we couldn’t – could we?’
Marlowe answered for him. ‘Why not.’ Folding his arms, he grinned. As he stepped towards the coffer, Lewgar put a restraining hand on his shoulder, and leant down towards his ear.
‘We might take us a day to think on it. In the meantime, we might take a look at this great and secret treasure you tilt at.’
30
They rode in the dazzling afternoon sunshine, through a loose collection of grey stone buildings set amidst sprawling emerald fields. Birdsong and the sharp spice of herb gardens filled the air as they dismounted and passed their horses to a groom who led them towards a cathedral of a barn. Passing back along the gravel path which cut left, through the vibrant greenery and a box-hedged knot garden, they approached Buckland Abbey.
Despite its name, the Abbey had long since parted company with monasticism. Lying only around fifteen miles from Wembury, it was the home of Sir Francis Drake. It rose up ahead of them, majestic, still retaining a look of the religious about it. It was an L-shaped building, of heavy stone walls, of turrets and arched windows, of deep-cut crosses and crenelated chimneys.
‘And here we are,’ said Lewgar. The gravel path opened up around the front of the building. Young trees fought for height before that part of it which must have been the old church. It looked peaceful. It felt peaceful. Summer sang on the light breeze. The lush meadows and bushes and gardens appeared to have shaken off the rain of the previous night and come out of it determined to thumb their noses at spring.
Marlowe didn’t answer. He had been quiet on the road, between field and hedgerow – and now he had upon him that look Lewgar recognised on his face as they’d waited to speak with Sir Walter Raleigh. He was intense, excited, his eyes bright, as though he’d taken some strange physic.
‘Shall we?’ Lewgar forced lightness into his voice. He felt none of it. It was right, what they were doing – he was right. Yet it might also be dangerous. It was certainly stupid. But he wished to know the truth, to have his suspicions confirmed. And, once he’d shared those suspicions with Marlowe, the fellow would have brooked no argument.
And so Buckland Abbey it was.
They had no need to knock on the door. Domestic servants on the paving stones – women beating out carpets – had seen them and hurried inside to fetch the steward. This stern fellow beckoned them forward, taking their names – their real names, both of them – and inviting them in to wait.
And wait they did.
They waited in a whitewashed room with low wooden stairs whilst the domestic life of the Abbey creaked and whistled and sang around them. Flowers were brought in in bowls. A page applied a brush to the floorboards. Maidservants carried pails of water to and fro, the clean stuff in to wash the walls, the soiled stuff out.
Eventually, the steward returned, offering a bow and inviting them forward. Thereafter, they passed through a hall – not a large room, not boasting the pretensions of Raleigh’s Durham House, but rather a provincial manor’s hall, panelled in shining oak, with a chequered floor and suspended candelabra. The quiet room released them into a hall filled with waiting men, who regarded them without interest. Lewgar lost his way after that: the Abbey passed in a blur of limewash, whitewash, wainscoting, and staircases. They climbed dizzying flights of wooden stairs which turned round and about on themselves, the central gap plunging to the ground floor below; they went through doors and rooms, galleries and antechambers, deeper and deeper into the house.
‘Sir Francis awaits within,’ said the steward, pausing at short slab of a door set in a white plaster wall. He knocked, entered, and announced their names, before stepping back out and inclining his head for them to enter. They did, their hats in their hands.
Drake was standing in small, square room with undressed walls. It was as though the great sea dog had missed shipboard life and sought to recreate it here, in the distant reaches of his fair country home. Old sea chests stood against the walls. There was no desk, but a chair with its back to a lead-paned window against which the branches of a tree brushed.
‘Ah,’ he said, giving them a hard – and hard to read – look. ‘It’s the boys – the scholar boys – of Cambridge. Who would have sought a place with me.’
‘Yes,’ said Lewgar.
‘Mr Lewgar, yes? And you must be Christopher Marlowe.’ He smiled, tilting back his bulbous brow. ‘It’s pleased I am that you’ve ceased using a false name. And no need for it, neither.’ He smacked his lips. ‘I’ve done a little seeking myself, since you came to me. Ay, and good Sir Walter too.’
‘We have been –’
‘Shut your mouth. I have a notion why you’ve come.’
Lewgar’s heart fluttered. He had understood, of course, something of what had been going on. The sailors aboard the Sparrowhawk had not intended to scuttle the ship and claim its gold out of their own greed – not wholly. They wouldn’t have done such a thing – and could not have concealed such a thing – without the blessing, and almost certainly the encouragement, of the leader of that voyage.
From the beginning, Sir Francis Drake had been the mastermind behind the strange business of the Sparrowhawk and its missing treasure.
Sir Francis Drake, therefore, had the lost treasure, El Sol Dorado, whatever it really was, in his possession.
What Lewgar didn’t know was whether the conspiracy went higher – whether the affair had been undertaken with the connivance of the Queen.
‘You wish to see it, then, do you?’
Lewgar and Marlowe looked at one another. Their plan, arranged in Wembury, had been to hint to Drake that they knew something and thereby to gauge his reaction and decide from it whether they were right. If so – well, they might consider themselves assured that the treasure was here, albeit beyond their sight.
‘You have it?’ asked Marlowe. ‘El Sol Dorado? It is here?’
Drake smiled. It was a sharklike smile, more bite than pleasure. Rather than answering, he went to a small door set deep in the plaster wall. Digging at his belt, he found a key and unlocked it, before pushing the door inwards. ‘Well. Go in.’
Lewgar scented danger. But Marlowe didn’t – or if he did, he didn’t care. He stepped easily through the door and Lewgar ducked in after him. The door banged behind them and he whirled. But Drake had come through as well and was right at his back.
The chamber was little more than a closet – perhaps, in a previous world, it had been a side chamber for an abbot or the like to pray. Now its walls had been stripped to bare stone. The only light came in from a window cut high above; it landed on a thick, brown coffer.
‘Open it,’ ordered Drake.
Marlowe needed no invitation. The lid squeaked backwards on its hinges and swung to the tiled floor with a thud. A bump of sackcloth lay illuminated. Lewgar turned. Marlowe looked over his shoulder. Drake only nodded.
With a jerk, Marlowe whipped away the cloth.
He gasped.
Lewgar stared.
‘Well, there is the thing you have plagued London in search of,’ said Drake. ‘El Sol Dorado.’
‘It is gold indeed then,’ breathed Marlowe. ‘No map nor chart. Gold.’
It was about the height of a man’s forearm and appeared to be made of solid gold. It was, more or less, in the shape of a squat little man in a large headdress. The headdress was a semicircle, etched with swirling patterns and studded with large blue-green gemstones. Beneath it was the little creature’s rectangular face, with a protruding golden nose and gemstone eyes. More gems stood on either side, forming enormous earrings. The body, a thick cube of gold, was as carved and bejewelled as the headdress, and sprouting from either side of it were raised arms holding what looked like little spheres – suns, Marlowe realised. Supporting it, making a man of it, were two stout little golden legs, with feet and carefully carved toes, each resting on a final base of gold banded with more of the blue-green stones. This was no gilded thing of painted leaf. It was massy, burnished, both light and dark, gleaming along every curve.
‘It is beautiful,’ said Marlowe. He was down on his knees, like a child, staring in fascination right back at the little golden man’s face.
Lewgar didn’t agree. It was a heathenish thing, alien, of no good Christian artistry, fashioned by wild men with heretical beliefs.
‘El Sol Dorado,’ said Marlowe. ‘We have discovered it.’
Drake laughed, turning Lewgar. ‘That is not El Sol Dorado.’
Marlowe’s head whipped round. ‘What?’ He added, though Drake seemed too amused to comment, ‘sir.’
‘Lift it,’ said the banty little knight. ‘Both of you. Lift it below the arms.’
His brow creasing, confused, Lewgar stepped forward as Marlowe rose. They did as they were told. The thing was heavy. Its cool surface warmed quickly at his touch. Drake moved into the room and closed the coffer beneath the thing. ‘Now,’ he said, ‘rest it on its back.’ They did so, and immediately Drake bent to its bottom, its base. Lewgar watched as his thick fingers found what appeared to be a plug of some kind – of gold – and twisted it free. Into his palm fell what looked like a piece of raggedy netting or string. ‘This,’ he announced, ‘is El Sol Dorado.’
The Queen's Gold: A Christopher Marlowe Spy Thriller Page 27
