A Tip for the Hangman

by Allison Epstein

  “Both of us will be on our way before the end of the week,” Gregory said. “I have another new recruit in Rheims I need to look after.”

  Kit would have laughed if his mind hadn’t been so occupied with the phrase both of us. Rheims was virtually synonymous with the English College: an institution that was part Catholic seminary, part recruiting ground for malcontent recusants trying to bring the pope’s influence back to England. It wasn’t at all surprising to hear that Walsingham had agents in Rheims, but it was something else to hear Gregory admit it, like having Odysseus confirm the trick with the bow and the dozen axes.

  “I’m flattered you didn’t think I could pass as a seminarian,” Kit said.

  Gregory sighed. “I’m not in the mood for jokes, Marlowe. Point of fact, it’s safest to assume I’m never in that mood. Walsingham and I both knew you wouldn’t have lasted a day with the priests.”

  “So where are you sending me, then?”

  “To her,” Gregory said, pushing the piece of paper across the table.

  Kit pulled the paper forward, bringing it closer in the dim light. To his surprise, the page did not hold another practice cipher or map or list of names. Instead, the sketched portrait of a woman looked back at him. No one he knew. But someone he wanted to.

  She was the queen’s age, he thought, or a few years younger. Beautiful? Perhaps not, though she might once have been. Age had spread her features with lines and a softness that looked new, a woman whom time had weathered faster than her years. But even in pencil, those black-and-white eyes gazed straight through him. Sharp. Perceptive.

  Dangerous.

  “Do you know who that is?” Gregory asked.

  Kit shook his head.

  “Lady Mary Stuart,” Gregory said. “Once the queen of Scots. You’ll get to know her better than you might like. But ideally not for long.”

  Five

  “Tom, don’t be angry,” Kit said. He sat on the end of his bed, watching Tom pace the length of his tiny room. The rain tapped against the window in double time to his footsteps.

  Tom glared at him. “I’m not angry.”

  Kit said nothing. He bit his tongue, letting Tom work through his thoughts alone. If Kit could have told him the truth, maybe then Tom would understand. He’d know that leaving Cambridge in the middle of term hadn’t been Kit’s choice. He’d know that when Arthur Gregory told you to ship out to Yorkshire to spy on the erstwhile queen of Scotland, you didn’t ask him to choose a more convenient time.

  But Kit couldn’t tell Tom that. Couldn’t tell him anything but the same lie he’d told Norgate that morning. That John Marlowe had been arrested for disorderly conduct, the kind involving four pints of beer and a pistol. That Kit had to return to Canterbury to settle with the landlord and help his mother negotiate the courts. Lying to Norgate had been simple. For all Kit knew, he might even have been telling the truth. He hadn’t spoken to his father in years; God knew what John had been up to.

  Lying to Tom was harder, though. It always was.

  “They’ll have you thrown out.” The way Tom stood now, chin high as if preparing to deliver a verdict in court, was not an improvement on the pacing. “It would save them money. And half the fellows hate you. You know that.”

  Kit sighed. “Tom. What do you want me to do?”

  Tom shook his head and glanced out the window. The freezing drops battered against the pane, soliciting entrance. Not quite snow, not yet, but soon. “Your father’s a hundred miles away. He can’t expect you to take care of him forever.”

  “I think you’ll find he can,” Kit said, taking his bag from the bed beside him. He had to leave. He was only making this worse by staying.

  “Let me come with you, then.”

  Kit froze.

  Tom’s startled expression mirrored Kit’s. He seemed as surprised to have said this as Kit was to have heard it. They were close enough now that Kit could see the small hooked scar at the corner of Tom’s eye, an injury from a fencing lesson in adolescence. Not for the first time, Kit wanted to reach out and brush his fingers against it, trace them down to Tom’s lips, those handsome lips Tom now bit in worry. Not for the first time, Kit placed his hands in his pockets instead. It was a friendly offer, he told himself. Nothing more.

  An offer no one else at Cambridge would make. An offer he wanted from no one but Tom.

  “The road’s not safe after dark.” Tom’s voice gained confidence as he spoke. “And you’re useless with a blade.”

  Kit’s social rank forbade him to own a sword, true, but he didn’t need one—he could take most of Cambridge with his fists if the need arose. But though he’d have bristled at the observation from anyone else, that wasn’t remotely Tom’s point.

  “I can keep you safe,” Tom finished.

  Kit’s mind shuddered to a stop. Nothing remained but Tom’s eyes, dove gray and earnest, and the echo of his words: I can keep you safe. Kit needed to leave, but his body ached to stay, stay and find safety here with Tom in this untouchable space, this little room guarded from the rain.

  Don’t, he told himself. He couldn’t afford to think that way. Face burning, he looked to the floor. “I have to go.”

  Tom had been Kit’s closest friend since their first year at Cambridge. By now, he could read Kit’s silences like speech. At last, he sighed and stepped to the side, clearing Kit’s path to the door. Kit was halfway out before Tom’s strained voice stopped him.

  “Kit.”

  He paused, turned back. “Yes?”

  Tom hesitated. “Be careful.” This was clearly not what he wanted to say.

  Kit couldn’t trust himself another moment. Without answering, he slung his bag over one shoulder and pushed through the door. He didn’t look back.

  He strode through the halls with his head down—the same path he’d taken with Gregory three endless weeks before. Five years he’d known Tom. Five years he’d overinterpreted innocent gestures and spun nothings into significance. And now, Tom had…

  No, he told himself, and opened the door. A buffet of rain slapped him, but he barely felt it. It meant nothing. He wouldn’t think about that now.

  * * *

  —————

  Soon, Kit burst into the taproom of the White Stag, drenched and piqued. Damn the rain, he thought, shaking his arms in irritation. A shower sluiced off his doublet, puddling on the floor. He looked around and forced his mind to focus.

  The White Stag was more crowded than when he and Gregory first met, but that didn’t surprise him. No one expected a public house to do a roaring trade at six on a Thursday morning. Now, on a Friday evening, most of the tables were full. The room glowed with flickering light from the hearth and the thick heat of close bodies and overlapping voices. A handful of men tipped their heads at Kit when he entered, which he ignored. He had spent enough evenings here to run into an acquaintance on any given Friday, but that wasn’t his concern at present.

  He stopped Mistress Howard as she bustled past, holding a leather purse from a paying customer. “Did anyone leave a message for me?” he said.

  “Your friend arranged a horse for you around back,” she answered. “And also said if you make an idiot of yourself, there’ll be hell to pay. So,” she added, tucking the purse into the bosom of her dress, “I would recommend against that.”

  If Gregory reminded him once more not to be an idiot, Kit thought, he might start taking offense.

  “Another pint, mistress!” came a voice from across the room.

  Heeding her battle cry, she disappeared into the crowd. Each of them had business to attend to. She would remain inside, on the dry side of the soot-stained window. Kit, on the other hand, ducked back through the front door, into the wind.

  Adjoining the tavern, the stable was dark, padded with straw dyed a dingy brown from the rain. A groom, wielding a pitchfork again
st a sizable pile of shit, looked up as Kit entered. “Gregory’s man?” he asked.

  Kit nodded. Already a man without a name. That hadn’t taken long.

  “You’re late,” said the groom.

  “I’m aware.”

  “This one’s yours.” The groom gestured at a nearby mare, brown with a white star. “Next post is ten miles on. And take care of her, mind, or I’ll feed your prick to the mules.”

  Gregory must have selected this groom personally.

  Kit entered the stall, running one hand along the mare’s neck. The horse craned round to look at him, taking the measure of its new rider. Kit didn’t doubt the animal found him wanting. He hadn’t ridden a horse in a decade.

  I can keep you safe, said Tom’s voice in Kit’s head.

  No. Not tonight. He would keep himself safe, starting now. Pushing Tom’s face from his mind, he focused instead on the memory of a penciled sketch, watching him with sharp black-and-white eyes.

  Lady Mary Stuart.

  It was true enough that Kit wasn’t cut out for the priesthood, though a seditious French seminary would at least have been an easier place to start. Instead, Walsingham was sending his newest spy straight to the heart of it. Mary Stuart, Queen Elizabeth’s cousin and great-niece of the old King Henry. The best hope of English papists who wanted to put a ruler of their creed back on the throne. And Kit was to keep her under surveillance. Yes, Kit had been trained, but it was still quite a task for Walsingham to give a man he met two weeks ago. When he said he couldn’t afford to be discriminating, he must have meant it.

  But it didn’t matter. If success depended on discretion, well, Kit could be discreet. Two days after he arrived, no one would remember a time he hadn’t been present. He could do this. He didn’t doubt it for a moment.

  Confidence has killed better men than you, Gregory had said. And worse ones too, no doubt.

  “Are you going?” the groom asked, leaning against the pitchfork.

  Kit patted the horse on the neck with an air of finality. “Yes,” he said.

  “Then go.”

  Six

  The dense rain pounded the parlor window until Anne Cooper couldn’t see more than a few feet beyond Sheffield Manor. A chill seeped to her seat near the door, which made her think there must be a crack, somewhere, between the window and the wall. How these poorly built estates weathered the generations, she didn’t know. But then, she had better things to think about than the history of the English manor. Anne’s hands were intent upon the knitting she’d taken up half an hour ago, moving independently of her attention. That remained on Thomas Morgan, who sat at the desk beneath the window composing a letter. The snap of the hearth underscored the sound of his pen. If only she could glean the words he wrote from the scratching on the page…

  From the couch, Mary sighed. “You must nearly be finished, Thomas,” she said. Her accent—from a childhood spent at the French court, which despite everything she made no effort to shake—imbued the words with yet more exasperation.

  “Nearly, madam,” Morgan said. He did not look up.

  “Tell him he is long overdue,” Mary said. She sat up straighter, to impart her own urgency into Morgan’s writing. “Tell him I do not intend to wait by the fireside, embroidering handkerchiefs and waiting for the axe.”

  Anne looked at her mistress, surprised. Mary had strong cause to expect persecution, but she had never yet proclaimed without prompting that she feared her own death.

  Morgan set aside the letter. Anne imagined he meant his expression to be reassuring, but his temperament was ill-suited to comfort. “You are safe here, madam,” he said. “Rest easy.” Not for the first time, Anne wondered how Morgan rose to prominence in Mary’s household, when he couldn’t tell a lie to save his life.

  “I do not want you to speak in platitudes,” Mary said. “I want you to write to him. If you will not, I will do it myself.”

  Chastised, Morgan nearly upended his inkwell in his haste to resume the letter.

  “Remind him,” Mary said, “that Dante wrote about a special circle of hell for traitors. And that if he proves incapable, I can find others to take his place.”

  Anne was so much part of the fabric of life at Sheffield that Mary and Morgan had forgotten she sat near them. Listening had long since taken precedence over knitting, and her sock suffered the consequences. She had dropped several stitches ten rows ago, and the sock now shrank at a diagonal. But what did that matter, when Mary spoke the word traitor? Was this only irrational suspicion, or a real threat bearing down on the house?

  Instead of pressing the point, Morgan set down the pen again and glanced to the door. “Madam,” he said.

  Anne, turning her listening ear outward, heard the footsteps as well.

  “Yes,” Mary said. “I am expecting someone tonight.”

  “Quite right, madam.”

  There could have been a murderer in the hall and Morgan would have said, “Quite right, madam.” Anne hadn’t yet decided whether Mary’s confidant suffered from an excess of political ambition or a shortage of spine.

  “Anne, if you would?” Mary said.

  If given the choice between supporting her mistress against threats of betrayal and playing porter, Anne would have let the visitor find his own way through Sheffield. But she’d been given an order, not a choice. She rose and ducked from the room.

  The manor’s entryway was elegant, Castilian marble floors and wood paneling along the walls. It, like Mary, belonged better in a Venetian palazzo than here, three miles from a village rife with pigs and straw and shit. It was a manor fit for a queen, even a displaced one, which made the shivering man dripping mud on the marble seem painfully out of place. A young man, slim in a way suggesting poverty, with short brown hair soaking wet against his forehead. He smelled of horse and rain and something that might have been incense, but was more likely tobacco.

  Anne frowned. She knew enough of the world to make distinctions among men. There was an air, a way of standing, a habit of dress that united all respectable people, and this man didn’t have it. A man like this had no business calling on a Stuart. He shook the water from his hair, like a dog out of the rain. Anne’s scowl deepened.

  “What’s your business in Sheffield, sir?” she asked.

  “So this is Sheffield. Excellent.” He flashed her a grin. Liking him less by the second, she didn’t return it. “It’s impossible to tell where you’re going in weather like this. I was worried I’d ended up in Southampton.”

  “Your business?” she said, this time without the sir.

  “This is the Earl of Shrewsbury’s manor, home to Mary Stuart, isn’t it?”

  Anne nodded. No use denying that, although she didn’t trust the man’s habit of answering questions with another question.

  “I’ve been sent as a footman to Her Ladyship. I believe I’m expected.”

  This was possible. The Privy Council arranged the bulk of Mary’s staff, filling it with cowards and sycophants who could pose no threat. But no savvy London politician would dispatch this insolent madman. She scanned him as subtly as she could, and while she saw no weapons, an assassin could hide a knife any number of places. She couldn’t dismiss him—there was a chance he meant what he said. And Mary expected him—there was a chance he was only who he claimed to be. But Anne had no intention of letting her guard down. These were dangerous times. Mary wasn’t the only one with reason to fear.

  Anne gestured toward the parlor. “The lady is within, Master…”

  “Marlowe. Kit Marlowe. At your service, mistress. In any way you might want.” He winked, and Anne understood everything at once.

  By the Virgin. Was that all this was? Not an assassin. Just a fool who didn’t know where his flirtation wasn’t wanted. Men. Every time.

  She opened the door and preceded him into the room. Mary watched
them enter with interest. Morgan barely mustered a glance in their direction.

  “Christopher Marlowe, madam,” Anne said, taking her previous seat near the door. Let Marlowe cope with Mary as best he could. She almost hoped he’d try his would-be seduction on her mistress. It would be the last thing he did on this earth.

  Marlowe stood some feet short of Mary, so as not to drip mud on the carpet. Anne watched him, first with disdain, then with shock. She must have blinked and missed some change, one actor substituting for another. This wasn’t the arrogant rake she’d met in the hall. He’d metamorphosed—somehow—into an aristocrat’s perfect servant. His every step spoke deference, every breath an apology.

  “My lady.” Marlowe bowed. “I apologize for my lateness and my, well—” He made a self-conscious gesture toward his sodden clothes.

  “Marlowe,” Mary said. “I blame you for neither your lateness nor your wetness. I would ask if you had a pleasant journey,” she added, glancing toward the deluge outside, “but it seems evident you have not.”

  “The rain did slow me, madam, but it wouldn’t stop me.”

  Well done, Anne thought. Transforming lateness into a sign of dedication. Shortcomings into virtues. Someone had taught this man well.

  “I am glad to hear it,” Mary said. “You may retire to the servants’ quarters on the third floor. Master Beton, my chamberlain, will direct you in the morning.” She wrinkled her nose. “A bath, I think, may be in order before then.”

  Marlowe ducked his head, choosing gratitude over offense. “Thank you, my lady. With your permission?”

  A small smile passed across Mary’s lips. She waved a hand, granting him leave. Marlowe inclined his head at Morgan, whose terse, unwelcoming silence was an art form in itself. Then he swept a final bow, striking the perfect balance of circumspection and extravagance, and left the room.