The English Agent

by Phillip DePoy

  “You know your history.” Marlowe took the cylinder. “You’re a very strange boy.”

  “Yes,” he sighed.

  “I meant it as a compliment,” Marlowe went on. “And I have a bit of information, for your ears only.”

  The boy looked up, then around the garden, making certain they were alone.

  “I now believe,” Marlowe said very softly, “that your mother is none other than Jane Fromond.”

  Leviticus stood up, eyes wide. “What?”

  “John Dee’s new wife,” Marlowe confirmed, and then improvised. “She had you when she was but thirteen, and you were given into other care, for the sake of her youth. She has seen to it that you are educated and looked after. But she dare not reveal your identity to anyone.”

  “Because John Dee is a magician,” Leviticus whispered breathlessly. “Everyone says. There is no telling what he might do.”

  Marlowe smiled. “Let me tell you what magic is,” he said. “Magic is a moment when a ghost appears on the stage, and everyone in the audience knows that ghost is an actor, and then, after another moment, in a hushed gallery, everyone forgets the actor, and there is actually a ghost on stage.”

  “Magic is belief,” the boy said slowly.

  “What a bizarrely intelligent person you are,” Marlowe observed. “How old did you say you were?”

  “Eleven,” the boy lamented. “Too old for a boy, and not yet a man.”

  “I know a hundred men who don’t have half your wit,” Marlowe told him. “But what do you make of this news about your mother?”

  “It’s puzzling,” he answered. “I thought I would be elated, or at the least relieved. But now I find that I only have more questions.”

  “The curse of an eager mind,” Marlowe said sympathetically. “Every answer only engenders more questions.”

  “You suffer from such a curse,” the boy said.

  It wasn’t a question.

  Marlowe stood. “I’m off to the Chartley, to wrestle more puzzles.”

  The boy nodded. “And I may as well tell you that I’m off to Walsingham’s offices to report this conversation. I tell him everything.”

  “I have just learned that,” Marlowe answered, “but don’t forget: you now owe me a debt of information.”

  “The next time we meet,” the boy vowed, “I will tell you secrets that will boil your ears.”

  “But not now.”

  “Not now,” he said, turning to leave. “Now you must leave with great haste, on the Queen’s business.”

  Without looking back, the boy strode away toward the side door whence he doubtless had come.

  Marlowe opened the cylinder and withdrew several pages from it.

  One was a copy of the Surety Act with Marlowe’s name on it, his permission to murder in the name of the Crown. One was a plan for his mission at Chartley. The last was the strangest; it was a set of drawings: strange letters or symbols, but not from any language Marlowe knew.

  * * *

  Inside a poorly lit room in Hampton Court, not a thousand yards from where Marlowe stood, Walsingham read aloud.

  “‘Madimi is a pretty girl of seven or nine years of age, half angel and half elfin,’”

  The old man looked up. “That is Dee’s first mention of the spirit. She has instructed Dee in her own Angelic language, which Dee names Enochian. But later she has changed. He says, ‘She openeth all her apparel and showeth herself all naked.’”

  The Queen sat in Walsingham’s chair, leaning forward on his desk.

  “Has my scientific advisor gone mad?” she asked. “Is that what you are saying?”

  “He is in pursuit of the Impossible.” Walsingham shrugged, setting down the pages he’d just read.

  “We know that he met with Rudolf last year,” the Queen mused, somewhat stiffly.

  “Yes,” Walsingham answered carefully, “but though Rudolf is by designation the Holy Roman Emperor—”

  “And by blood the cousin of Philip,” the Queen interrupted.

  “… he is also, by nature, an idiot,” Walsingham concluded. “He has always been more interested in esoteric fantasies than in guiding the ship of state.”

  “You mean that his mind is weak and his will is lazy, and I agree.” She stood.

  “I also mean that Dee is in pursuit of knowledge, not power,” Walsingham said.

  “Then why send Marlowe his way?”

  Walsingham lifted his shoulders. “I could be wrong.”

  “Marlowe knows all about this, you realize,” the Queen said. “He knows that you’re leading him to Dee on purpose, with your gambit about Dee’s wife. And that odd little boy. Marlowe has guessed it all.”

  “He probably has,” Walsingham agreed.

  “And why is he lying about the murderer of our agent Beak? She was never killed by that actor.”

  “Marlowe has a plan,” was Walsingham’s answer. “I would like to see how it works out.”

  “You have a plan, Philip has a plan, Marlowe has a plan,” Her Majesty listed softly, “and no one knows where the wheel stops spinning; whose plan will win out in the end.”

  “As to John Dee,” Walsingham said, deliberately changing direction, “I believe that he is genuinely attempting to converse with Angels for the primary benefit of your safety.”

  The Queen did not look back as she left the room, but she said, softly, over her shoulder, “Then let him work faster. I am in need of Angels just now.”

  * * *

  Marlowe made his way down the narrow streets toward Shoreditch, leading the horse he’d been given, completely absorbed by his thoughts. He had hidden the cylinder in his boot and kept the odd manuscript at his waist, superstitiously afraid to put them side by side. The strange page from the cylinder was clearly an alphabetical key to the manuscript stolen from Grem. The manuscript was code; Dee had the key. Dee was in league with Rudolf, nephew to the King of Spain, the man working with Mary to destroy England, or at least the England Marlowe knew. But if Walsingham was aware of Dee’s treachery, why not arrest Dee and have done with it?

  Walsingham was truly depending on Marlowe to infiltrate Mary’s confidence and ferret out the entirety of the conspiracy. Marlowe saw the wisdom of that. If they were going to destroy the tree of deceit, better to pull up all the roots than merely to hack off a few of the limbs.

  So. Was the manuscript a necessary clue or a tangential distraction? To answer that, Marlowe needed a conversation with the very odd Belpathian Grem. Since a quick stop at the Travelers’ encampment was in order anyway, on the road to Chartley, it seemed an easy task to accomplish.

  An instant later that task became unnecessary: Belpathian Grem leapt upon him from a darkened alley, a slim silver dagger in his hand.

  They tumbled into the street. Passersby looked the other way, walked around. Street brawls were common. And these men had knives. Best to ignore them.

  After a few dozen yards, Grem ended up on top of Marlowe, with the point of his blade tickling Marlowe’s throat.

  “You have my book,” Grem said plainly.

  “No,” Marlowe began.

  The point of Grem’s blade drew a small point of blood.

  “You do,” Grem said, smiling. “You have taken it from me as others have tried to do. You intend to sell it yourself.”

  “No, it is a communication from enemies of our Queen,” Marlowe whispered. “You must not deliver it to John Dee!”

  “In fact I must,” Grem countered. “He’s paid for it.”

  “It’s treason!”

  “No, it’s five thousand pounds,” Grem corrected, “and my word of honor that I would deliver it. I am unconcerned with the political constructs of your world, Kit Marlowe.”

  Marlowe blinked. “What did you call me?”

  “Kit Marlowe,” Grem whispered, “same as does your father, and a certain lady of whom you are lately enamored. I know secrets within secrets. I am, as Gelis told you, King of the Weird Folk.”

  For effe
ct, Grem widened his eyes and began to drool.

  “Ah.” Marlowe relaxed. “There it is; you’ve gone a beat too far. I know theatre when I see it. You play a part. You are a fictional character. Let me up.”

  Grem hesitated. That was his peril. In that moment of hesitation, Marlowe drew his own blade, rolled to dislodge Grem, and came to his feet, dagger in hand.

  Grem scrambled backward, grinning more manically.

  “Nicely done,” he snarled. “Say good-bye to Ned for me.”

  “What?” Marlowe asked, taken off guard.

  “I said, ‘Catch this!’”

  In the next second Marlowe saw Grem’s silver dagger hurling toward his head, hilt first, and then it bashed him right between the eyes.

  Marlowe sank to his knees, his world gone black.

  EIGHTEEN

  Ned Blank lay sleeping in the noonday sun. In slumber, he looked like a child of seven or eight years. There was still a bit of rouge and powder on his face, and he was dressed in a ragged doublet and trousers too big for his underfed frame.

  He awoke with a start when a shadow fell across his face.

  “I’m the only reason you’re here,” Marlowe told him, “and not in the Tower. Do you understand that?”

  “Tower?” Ned mumbled.

  “You’re the accused murderer of Leonora Beak.”

  Ned sat up. “That again? You know I didn’t do it.”

  “Then who did?”

  Ned rubbed his eyes. He was hemmed in on all sides. Gelis stood next to Marlowe. Both men looked unhappy.

  “Who killed that lady?” Ned blinked. “How would I know?”

  “You know more than you say,” Marlowe answered.

  Ned yawned. “Always.”

  “But now it’s time to tell everything.” Marlowe took a step closer.

  “Everything?” Ned stretched. “That would take a good bit of time.”

  “Then let’s begin.”

  Marlowe sat down on a three-legged stool next to Ned. Gelis’s wife sat nearby, stirring a pot over coals, doing her best to ignore the men. The sun was warm. Ned began to sweat.

  “Who is Belpathian Grem?” Marlowe asked.

  Gelis’s wife lifted her head at the mention of that name.

  Ned looked at the ground. “Who?”

  “You know very well who,” Gelis snapped. “The King of the Weird Folk!”

  Ned shook his head, smiling. “The Weird Folk. That’s a children’s story, isn’t it?”

  “Ned,” Marlowe said calmly, “I think you know the man. I think you have worked with him.”

  “No,” Ned responded, but a little too quickly.

  “He told me to say good-bye to you,” Marlowe pressed.

  “Good-bye? Where’s he going?”

  “In the short term, he intends to deliver a certain manuscript to John Dee,” Marlowe answered. “Gelis stole it from him and gave it to me. Grem stole it back again, and left me in the street. But in the long term, I have no idea where he’s going. I was hoping you’d tell me.”

  “Just take Ned to the Tower, Marlowe,” Gelis muttered. “Have done with him.”

  “Wait,” Ned said quickly.

  Marlowe looked up at Gelis. “Or I could cut out his tongue. Put an end to his livelihood.”

  Gelis’s wife stood and glanced once, in disgust, at the men, then returned to her cart.

  “I could not be certain, of course, but I might know the man you mean,” Ned said at once. “Under all that hair and madness, I may have detected one Robert Armin. And if that is true, he would be going anywhere that would pay him. He’s more mercenary than actor, in my opinion.”

  Marlowe’s head flew back. “I knew it!”

  “Who is Robert Armin?” Gelis asked.

  “He was, until recently, apprentice to a goldsmith,” Marlowe answered. “But Tarlton himself has taken Robert under his wing.”

  “The very man,” Ned affirmed.

  “I don’t understand,” Gelis said. “Are you talking about the clown Richard Tarlton, the Queen’s favorite jester?”

  “Yes,” Marlowe told him, “and this man Robert Armin is now Tarlton’s protégé. I have heard gossip of it. He’s an actor, not a king.”

  “But the stories about him,” Gelis protested. “I heard them in the Netherlands, in Higher Germany; all over France.”

  “And have you heard tales of The Queen’s Men in such places as well?” Ned asked.

  “I believe what Ned is trying to say,” Marlowe announced, “is exactly what I suspect: these so-called Weird Folk are, in fact, a traveling company of actors. A troupe whose metaphysical realities confound and baffle everyone everywhere.”

  “Aye,” Ned confirmed. “And Robert Armin is better than most at delivering the eeriest of goods.”

  “Except that I have seen Robert Armin perform,” Marlowe demurred, “and that man Grem is not at all like the clown I saw.”

  “He’s well costumed and wigged,” Ned objected.

  “Or,” Marlowe offered, “you could be lying.”

  “That’s what actors do for a living, isn’t it?” Gelis asked.

  “I would argue the contrary: theirs is the only profession that requires absolute honesty,” Marlowe countered, “but not everyone agrees with me.”

  Gelis took in a deep breath and gazed at the green fields all around, bathed in golden sunlight.

  “What is real, and what is theatre?” he asked.

  “I seldom tell the difference betwixt the two,” Ned confessed.

  “But to what purpose?” Marlowe asked. “Why would Ned lie about this?”

  “And what could be the aim of such odd behavior on the part of the alleged Belpathian Grem?” Gelis added.

  “These are only a few of the questions I mean to answer,” vowed Marlowe, striding toward the horse given to him at Hampton Court, “before this week is done.”

  * * *

  Every fiber of his being told Marlowe to find the imaginary King Belpathian Grem. But he knew what Walsingham would say: that the delivery of a manuscript to John Dee would not take precedent over the urgency of Chartley Manor. His first duty was to ingratiate himself to the false Queen Mary.

  Imaginary King, False Queen—what odd characters we have in this play, Marlowe thought as his horse galloped northwest toward Stafford.

  It would be a good day’s ride; he’d not see the manor house until the next morning if he alternated between trotting and walking his horse. The packet Walsingham had given him would see to his bed and board, but gaining Mary’s confidence would be a strange bit of theatre. It would require a good story. And since the best stories were the truest, in some fashion or other, Marlowe began to concoct a narrative out of his experience in Delft, and his encounter with the assassin Gérard, whose first name was Balthazar, and so might be linked to Kyd.

  Then, without any warning, Marlowe suddenly knew who had killed Leonora.

  Antony Babington had been in Delft, was probably in league with Gérard and Mary, and had returned to England around the same time that Leonora and Marlowe had come home. Had Babington gotten word of Leonora’s involvement in Delft, and knowledge of Gérard and the greater plot against the Queen? And if he had, might that have led him to murder Leonora before returning to London—or to Chartley?

  Babington killed Leonora.

  That would have a kind of horrible clarity. It would also mean that Babington would be waiting to kill Marlowe too. So if Babington had gone to Chartley, the waters there would be even more difficult to navigate.

  A little like having an incapacitated rudder, Marlowe thought.

  Gain Mary’s confidence without revealing himself to Babington. That would take some doing.

  Or, if Babington walked with a limp, perhaps the path would be clear: strangle the man as he had done Leonora.

  But that could not be done before evidence of his complicity with Mary had been obtained, if such evidence existed.

  How to proceed?

  Day decli
ned, and wore on into evening. The moon rose and the stars winked; Marlowe rested and watered his horse, ate several oatcakes, and tried not to let himself be overcome by the impulse to revenge. It proved a difficult battle.

  Riding on until dawn, the landscape turned hilly; here and there the trees betrayed a leaf or two of red or gold. It would be an early autumn, and a hard winter. Deer began to appear among the bracken and birch. Nightjar, brambling, yellowhammer, and bullfinch all crowded the trees, announcing the rising of the sun.

  As he slowed his horse again, thinking to take a moment’s rest, he saw three young girls picking lingonberries, a certain sign of the early fall season.

  “Hello,” he called out genially.

  They all stopped what they were doing and looked up.

  “Would you know how much farther it is to Chartley Manor from here?” he asked.

  One of the girls giggled, but another took a bold step in Marlowe’s direction.

  “You’re on your way to that cursed castle, then?” she asked, lifting her chin in his direction.

  Her plain brown dress was pulled tightly around her slender waist, and her red hair was alive in the morning breeze.

  “It’s cursed?” Marlowe asked, smiling.

  “For these three hundred years,” she assured him. “It was in the month of May, and Robert de Ferrers, who lived in that castle, was losing the battle of Chesterfield. A black calf was born at Chartley then, and from that day to this, whenever there’s a black calf born there, evil follows in its wake.”

  “I see,” Marlowe said, failing to keep the amusement from his voice.

  “You don’t believe me,” the girl said defiantly. “But heed this list: the 7th Earl of Ferrers, the Countess de Ferrers, their son, Viscount Tamworth, his daughter, Lady Frances Shirley, and his second wife. They all died following the birth of a black calf on the property. Why do you think the castle was abandoned?”

  Then Marlowe recalled what Leviticus had said: “Chartley used to be a real castle. Then it was abandoned.”

  “As luck would have it,” Marlowe told the girl, “my name is not de Ferrers. But I can see that you are a true and honest woman, and I do not doubt your word.”