The English Agent

by Phillip DePoy

  Marlowe thrashed, but he found that his dagger was gone and someone had thrown a sack over his head. Dragged by his ankles from the coach, he hit his head on the step and landed on the flat of his back, on the ground.

  More indecipherable words were whispered, and the coach took off.

  As the noise of its equipage faded off toward Buntingford, Marlowe’s hands were tied. Then he was hoisted onto the back of a horse. The reins were put into his hands.

  Then a woman’s voice from below him, on the ground, said, very gently, “There now. You’re safe.”

  Taking that pronouncement for a threat, Marlowe kicked out in the direction of the voice, but his boot found only air.

  “Let’s get off the road, then,” said another voice, gruff, masculine.

  Seconds later Marlowe was riding. There were at least three other horses around him. They rode fast. Marlowe had to concentrate in order to stay on his horse. Only then did it occur to him that the water he’d taken from the boy at the watering stop had been laced with something. That would explain the odd dream, the inability to defend himself, and his trouble steadying himself on top of a horse.

  “Have I been poisoned?” he called out.

  A man laughed.

  A woman’s voice, the same that had spoken before, said, “After a fashion.”

  There was more laughter.

  Marlowe struggled to remember what Lopez had taught him about just such a situation.

  First: pain. Marlowe twisted his wrists against the binding that held them together, and winced. He twisted harder. He could feel blood on his hands. Good.

  Second: breath. He concentrated, partly thanks to the searing pain in his wrists, on steadying his breathing, and slowing it down. The heart pumped the poisoning of the blood, the breath pumped the bellows of the heart. Slow the heart and slow the poison. He took in long steady breaths, counting to seven each time, holding it for a moment, then exhaling for another count of seven. His body relaxed. His mind cleared.

  Third: action.

  Without another thought, Marlowe let go of the reins, took one foot out of its stirrup, and launched himself backward, off his horse and onto the ground. He landed on his back again, but he was prepared. He rolled, somersaulted twice, and came up on his feet. With his tied hands he plucked the sack from his head.

  For a split second the riders up ahead seemed not to understand what had happened. Good. Marlowe reached down into his boot and retrieved his other dagger. They’d not found that. With three deft moves he sliced the leather strap around his wrists just enough to weaken it. Twisting, sending more blistering pain up his arms, he snapped the bonds.

  To his right there were thick woods, too thick for horses, but also difficult for any living thing. To his left there was a small stream, and across it more woods, but an easier way. Just as the riders stopped and began to turn around, Marlowe caught sight of something in the corner of his right eye. A white hare slipped into the thicket and vanished.

  Marlowe followed.

  It was a tunnel too small for a man, but Marlowe’s desperation ploughed through, and his dagger sliced and snapped the worst of the vines and branches. The rabbit was long gone, but Marlowe was able to claw and crawl his way out and up until he found himself on the other side of the thicket. Bruised, scratched, and light-headed, he stood. He could hear the others, only yards away, shouting and hacking at the tangled hedges and brambles. Taking a very deep breath, Marlowe turned and ran as fast as he could in the direction opposite that noise.

  He picked up his pace, his chest pounding and his eyes blurred, until the sounds behind him faded. He came to a relative clearing and stopped to catch his breath, and to think.

  Four: water.

  Lopez had told him that if he were ever poisoned, Marlowe should drink water in big gulps, very fast, and then try to vomit. Glancing around, he took a moment to regret not having run toward the stream. Then he set off again, a bit slower.

  The woods were pleasant enough. The morning was headed toward the midday hour, and linnet song filled the warm air. The trees were not so thick, and he could see a cloudless sky. There was moss below his boots, which he took as a sign that there was water somewhere near. Scanning the area all around him, he spotted several gray boulders, and headed for them.

  As he drew nearer, he thought he could hear the sound of splashing water. Unfortunately, his feet were made of lead, and his body longed for the moss below them. His eyes closed. He forced them open. They closed again.

  The last thing he knew, he was on the ground, thankful for the soft moss, and the lovely bit of sunshine on his face.

  * * *

  Marlowe sat up with a start.

  He was sitting beside a small cooking fire. The sun was easing toward the western horizon. There were several wagons, dozens of horses, and children playing nearby. His hands were not tied. It took him a moment to clear his head, but he was forced to admit that he had not died.

  He was in an encampment of Traveling People.

  “Look who’s up,” said a voice from behind in a thick Scots accent.

  Marlowe turned. His eyes adjusted. He blinked.

  “Is it,” he began hesitantly, “did I meet you on the roadside? Is it Gelis?”

  “It is indeed,” the man said, smiling. “And you told me that your name was Robert Greene, although it is not.”

  “No,” Marlowe agreed, “it is not.”

  Gelis sat down beside Marlowe, still wrapped in his tattered cloak, and handed over a plate of food. Marlowe took it but only stared.

  “It’s good,” Gelis assured him. “Good food.”

  “As good as the water I drank at the rest stop?” Marlowe asked, slowly inching his hand down toward his boot, and the hidden dagger. “The boy who gave it to me was one of your lot.”

  “Well, yes, in truth,” Gelis admitted. “But that was for your own good, you see. You were meant to fall asleep and wake up here.”

  “You poisoned me!” Marlowe set down the plate and reached for his blade.

  “It was a sleeping potion,” Gelis complained. “Nothing more.”

  Marlowe realized at that moment that his dagger was gone.

  A second later Gelis smiled and held it up. “Looking for this?”

  “See here,” Marlowe began, standing up.

  Instantly five or six men appeared, all armed. They were dressed oddly, some in ribbons, almost like Morris Dancers. But their dark faces were hard, not built for revelry.

  Gelis had not risen. “This is exactly why we slipped you the sleeping potion,” he rumbled. “You’re a hothead, and you’re good with a blade. I know that from experience with you, but we’ve also been warned.”

  “Warned?”

  “Your friend the doctor told us you’d be trouble.”

  “You’ve spoken with Dr. Lopez?” Marlowe looked down at Gelis, not certain that the man was telling the truth.

  “Sit down. I don’t feel like standing, and this hurts my neck.”

  Another quick review of the several men standing around forced Marlowe to accede to that request. He sat.

  “The doctor told us to give you something that would make you sleep,” Gelis went on, “so that we could get you here, away from prying eyes and ears, and tell you what’s happened since last we met.”

  Gelis turned then and said something in a language Marlowe didn’t know. The other men vanished behind carts.

  “I assume you know,” Gelis continued, his voice grave, “that Leonora Beak is dead.”

  Marlowe nodded. He discovered that he could not speak for a moment.

  Then Gelis offered Marlowe back his dagger.

  “She’s the reason you’re here and not dead on the roadside,” Gelis went on. “I think you’ll listen to me now—now that you know I am bound to help you because of her that helped me.”

  Marlowe nodded once more, taking the dagger and sliding it back into its hidden sheath in his boot.

  “Good,” Gelis said softly.
“And now I shall tell you what has happened, and how you come to be at the finest encampment of Traveling People in all of England.”

  * * *

  According to Gelis, after Marlowe and Leonora rode off toward Maldon, Gelis and his family took Leonora’s horse and hitched it to their wagon home. They went directly to the Buntingford changing station, and the Bell Inn.

  When they pulled up in front of the inn, a very angry stable boy raced their way, shouting.

  Seconds later, a man dressed in red appeared, rapier in hand, and told Gelis in no uncertain terms that everyone on the cart was going to die.

  The wife screamed. The son was struck dumb. Gelis, at least by his own report, remained calm.

  “What have we done,” he asked the Spaniard, “to provoke such a harsh welcome to this place?”

  “That’s Miss Beak’s horse!” the stable boy screamed. “These bleeding Egyptians have killed her!”

  Gelis was careful not to move. The man in red was at his side, and the point of the rapier was touching Gelis’s Adam’s apple.

  “The very kind lady, Leonora Beak by name,” Gelis began, not looking anywhere in particular, “gave us this horse and told us to return it here. Then she and Mr. Greene rode away, toward Maldon.”

  “Why?” the man in red demanded to know. “Why would she give you her horse?”

  “Ours had been stolen from us,” Gelis answered, still frozen, “by them that Miss Beak and Mr. Greene was chasing. This ungodly trio, two men and a very vicious girl, they menaced us, and took our Primrose. That’s our horse’s name. Primrose. And, you see, Miss Beak is, it would seem, a kind soul. She seen what devastation is wrought on a Traveling family that cannot travel, and took pity. She give us her own Bess. That is what she called this one here. Bess.”

  “He’s lying!” the stable boy screamed, his face red, tears in his eyes. “They’ve killed her and taken Bess. They’re all villains, these cur dog Egyptians!”

  But the man in red lowered his blade.

  “How would he know the horse’s name?” he asked.

  “That’s right,” Gelis said, failing to hide the relief in his voice. “Miss Beak, she called this here horse by name of Bess.”

  “Anything else?” the man in red asked, sheathing his weapon.

  “She said,” Gelis answered, “that there was a doctor here present.”

  “Yes?” the man in red locked eyes with Gelis.

  “Well,” he began, and pulled aside the blanket on his lap, “I’ve been shot, you see, and she mentioned that there might be a doctor hereabouts.”

  The man in red smiled. “She did, did she?”

  “Aye.” Gelis nodded. “You’d be the doctor, then.”

  Gelis’s wife whispered something.

  “And,” Gelis went on, “we’ve not eat in now these three days.”

  The man in red turned to the stable boy.

  “Take Bess to her place,” he told the boy.

  Still certain of the treachery of the Travelers, the boy began to unhitch Bess from the cart.

  “Come inside,” the man in red said.

  That was all. He turned and entered the inn.

  Gelis climbed down, steering clear of the stable boy, and helped his wife and child down. They moved warily toward the entrance to the inn. Gelis opened the door.

  There was blood everywhere. Tables and chairs were overturned. The place was empty save for the man in red.

  “Take a seat,” he told Gelis.

  Gelis found a chair and sat. The wife and child stood so close they were touching him.

  “Please tell your wife that she may avail herself of what food she may find in the kitchen room,” the man in red announced, taking off his cloak and his rapier.

  With that he approached with a cup in one hand and a dagger in the other.

  “You’ll need to drink this,” he told Gelis, “and then I’ll dig out the shot in your leg.”

  The boy began to cry. The wife’s eyes were so wide they threatened to explode.

  Gelis told them, in the family language, to go into the backroom and find food. They didn’t move. Gelis insisted. The man in red stood his ground.

  At length wife and child quit the public room in favor of the kitchen, and the doctor knelt beside Gelis.

  Gelis, primarily to distract himself after drinking from the cup given to him by the doctor, looked around the room and observed, “Looks like there was a war in here.”

  The doctor nodded. “The three people who attacked you killed a woman and a young boy here, and may have murdered the landlord of this place; he has not yet recovered.”

  “That would be Miss Beak’s father, I’d imagine,” Gelis said absently, staring at the blood on the floor, “from what she said.”

  Without a warning, the doctor tipped the point of his dagger into the wound on Gelis’s thigh.

  Gelis grunted and stared down at the mess. The drink the doctor had given him had taken hold of his brain, and he thought to himself that his wound looked like a rose blooming out of his flesh, a red, bleeding rose.

  The doctor nosed the dagger deeper, and in some remote part of his brain Gelis knew that he ought to care, but he did not. Then he abandoned all thought, took a deep breath, and fell fast asleep where he was, sitting in the chair.

  * * *

  “That doctor’s a wonder, I’ll tell you that,” Gelis concluded.

  Marlowe moved a little closer to the fire. It was a fine warm evening, but the flames were comforting.

  “So you stayed on at the Bell?” he asked after a moment.

  “Aye,” Gelis answered.

  “There’s more to the story, though,” Marlowe said. “I was told you’d stolen horses and run away.”

  “There’s more to the story,” Gelis acknowledged.

  In the background, behind one of the wagons, there were children playing. Someone on the other side of the small camp was playing a highland harp. Marlowe could tell the difference between the sound of fingernails on wire strings and fingertips on gut.

  “But Mr. Beak, the landlord,” Marlowe went on after a moment, “is still alive?”

  “He is.”

  Marlowe stared into the fire. “Good.”

  Gelis reached behind himself and produced a jug and two cups.

  “Have you ever had the Water of Life?” he asked Marlowe.

  “Sorry?” Marlowe looked up at Gelis.

  Gelis poured. “Take it slow. It’s not ale. You’ve got to sup it. And if you’ve not had it, ever, it’ll skin your tongue at first. But as surely as God is in heaven, the pure joy of the world is in this jug.”

  He held out a cup and Marlowe took it. Gelis set down the jug and saluted with his cup.

  Marlowe sipped. Fire tore through his mouth, seared his throat, and attacked his gut with the fury of a berserk avenger.

  “Christ,” Marlowe rasped.

  “Aye,” Gelis answered, grinning. “Take another sup right now!”

  Marlowe obeyed. The second taste was warm, filled with oak fire and a vague sweetness near the end.

  “What in God’s name is this stuff?” Marlowe managed to say.

  “Water of Life.” Gelis downed his cup. “Make it myself. All it takes is a copper kettle, a coil, a wood fire—and patience.”

  “Fire and coil.” Marlowe stared at the liquid fire in his cup. “You’ve distilled something. Possibly the devil’s backside.”

  Gelis exploded with laughter.

  “That’s it exactly!” he coughed as soon as he collected himself. “You might well think we’ve boiled down the devil’s rump. But by the time you get to the bottom of the cup, you’ll be asking me if we made it from an angel’s wing. Anyway, doesn’t taste like that warm piss you folk in London town call ale, now does it?”

  “It does not.” Marlowe took a bigger gulp. “And you’re right: it does get better with every taste.”

  “Good.” Gelis licked his lips, and his face went dark. “Now.”

  Marl
owe understood that the man had something serious to say. He finished his cup, squinting against the pain of the swallow. The brew was already making the world a softer place, and a kinder one.

  “Sometime early last night, while Leonora Beak was in attendance at her father’s bedside, as she had been nearly every second after she returned from your adventures,” Gelis said briskly, “a villain stole into the room and strangled her from behind while her father slept.”

  “You know she was strangled?”

  “Aye. You could see by her neck: purple as a sunset. And it was a wide swath, like someone had come up behind her, locked an arm around her throat, and held tight until she was gone.”

  “No other evidence?”

  “No other what?” Gelis asked.

  “I need to see the room,” Marlowe told him. “I may be able to ascertain something about the murderer from the lay of the room.”

  “I don’t see how,” Gelis began.

  “Who found her?” Marlowe interrupted.

  “My boy,” Gelis answered. “The wife had found a bit of lamb stew in the kitchen, something from the cook that was killed.”

  “Mrs. Pennington,” Marlowe affirmed.

  “Aye,” Gelis went on. “She took it up for Miss Beak to eat, and a short while later the boy went to fetch the bowl. He found it on the floor, stew spilled everywhere. He called to Miss Beak, then shook her, then he seen her neck. He come running to me.”

  “The chair was not overturned?”

  “No.”

  “Her father saw nothing?”

  “No, he’s never woke up,” Gelis said. “Still.”

  “Who was staying at the inn?”

  “None but us,” Gelis answered. “The doctor departed as soon as he was certain that I won’t bleed to death.”

  “You and your family,” Marlowe said, leaning forward. “None of the rest of your fellow Travelers were at the inn?”

  “Them lot?” he laughed. “No. They don’t generally care to stay indoors for much of anything. They’ve been camped here, waiting to meet up with us.”

  “And why did you take me from the Queen’s coach,” Marlowe asked, his voice a little louder. “Why did you bring me here instead of letting me go to the Bell?”