Secret World

by M. J. Trow

  ‘I’m not a foreigner,’ Marlowe protested. ‘I am from Kent.’

  ‘I know you are not a foreigner,’ the man said with a laugh. ‘But you’re in Suffolk now, master, and things are different here. Anyone not from the town is a foreigner. Anyone not related to you is a foreigner. That makes you a foreigner on two counts, so watch your step. They’re a funny lot round here.’

  Marlowe had to ask. ‘And you? Are you a foreigner?’

  ‘As foreign as the day is long, master, but I mingle. That’s the key around here. Blend and mingle and you will get on. Stand out and they’ll kill you where you stand. They’re a funny lot round here.’

  ‘You said.’

  ‘And for a reason. It isn’t something to forget if you want to live to go back to Kent or wherever it is you come from.’

  ‘Well … thank you.’ Marlowe wasn’t sure whether he had perhaps just met one of the funny lot or not and before he could find out, the door opened again and the man looked round.

  ‘Yes?’ he asked the shadowy figure inside, who muttered something indistinguishable. Turning to Marlowe, he said, ‘Good luck with your quest, Master …’

  Something made Marlowe reply, ‘Watson.’

  ‘Master Watson. Don’t forget to haggle, now.’ And with that, the door slammed shut behind him and Marlowe was alone again, standing in the street. He looked back and forth and there didn’t seem to be anyone else to ask, so he stepped out lively, in search of the stable. He didn’t know what he might find at Ness End Hall but he felt that time was of the essence. A black dog was on his shoulder and he needed to solve this conundrum before it bit him.

  EIGHT

  The evening sun glowed a fierce orange over the trees of Starkey. Nicholas Faunt could see the lights of the Hall like fireflies in the distance. All day he had trotted north, through Bishopsgate and Moor Fields to take the road through Hertfordshire. There was a hunt in full cry in the fields south of Lord Burghley’s Hatfield and Faunt rested to watch the gallants and their ladies, a flutter of colour riding through the pale gold of the ripening corn. He saw no sign of the doe, but the dogs knew where she was and they howled in the afternoon, dashing blind through the barley stalks and leaping the low walls of the covert. He heard the bells on the wrists of the hawkers and saw the grey- and white-streaked birds high against the blue. Hind and hare were both at risk today.

  Faunt had ridden on, moving north-east along the old legions’ road with its ruts iron-hard in high summer. He had stopped under the welcoming gables of the Fat Ox, tethering his horse to a post there and won himself a few groats at tables. His opponent was the innkeeper, so bewildered by the speed of Faunt’s pieces over the board that he ended up paying for the man’s luncheon and the water for his horse.

  ‘What did you say brought you this way, sir?’ the innkeeper had asked as Faunt swung into the saddle again.

  ‘I didn’t,’ he replied with a smile. He leaned low over the horse’s neck to murmur in the man’s ear, ‘But let’s just say I’m looking for a crock of gold at the end of a rainbow.’

  ‘Good luck with that, sir,’ the innkeeper had called and had carried on grumbling about the ruinous monopoly on wines of that bastard Sir Walter Ralegh.

  Now Faunt let his bay amble through the sheep pastures where the hurdles stood at lazy angles and ducks quacked at him from the safety of their reeds. He heard dogs barking and saw torches suddenly burst into life at a side door of the Hall and saw men come running. There were three of them, armed with staves and an arquebus.

  ‘Ho, stranger!’ one of them called. ‘What business have you at Starkey?’

  ‘Private business, sirrah!’ Faunt told him. ‘With Sir Oliver.’

  ‘That won’t do, sir,’ a female voice called from the doorway.

  Faunt could not make out her face, silhouetted as she was with the Hall’s lights behind her, but there was no doubting the outline of her form. He swept off his cap and swung out of the saddle, glad to be able to flex his legs.

  ‘Well?’ She stood facing him now. The girl was perhaps twenty, with long dark hair piled high under a simple cap of lace. Her eyes smouldered at him and she placed her hands on her hips, the farthingale swaying as she waited.

  ‘I am Nicholas Faunt,’ he told her. ‘Queen’s messenger.’

  ‘Show me your papers, Master Faunt,’ she said, her voice as cold as the nose of the wolfhound that now snuffled round the messenger’s leg.

  He obliged, drawing the parchment slowly from his doublet in case one of the serving men, the one with the gun, should be of a nervous disposition. ‘You know Her Majesty’s cypher?’ he asked her.

  She nodded and smiled. ‘You are most welcome, Master Faunt. Will you come this way?’ She led him into the entranceway to the Hall. ‘Stable Master Faunt’s horse, Stewart,’ she ordered. ‘You will stay the night, Master Faunt?’

  ‘That would be a kindness, lady,’ he said.

  ‘Lady,’ she giggled. ‘You can call me Marie.’

  ‘A French name?’ Faunt asked her. Years in the service of Francis Walsingham had taught him to be as suspicious of foreigners as any London apprentice. Too many of them were Papist projectioners, still bent on claiming the head of the Jezebel of England.

  ‘A Maltese name,’ she told him. ‘Won’t you take some supper, Master Faunt?’

  ‘Nicholas,’ he insisted.

  She led him into the main chamber where a huge oak table filled half the room and the wolfhound circled back to his bed in front of the stone fireplace, black and empty now in the summer’s heat. It was cool here and the room glittered with candles, glowing on the Gobelin tapestries that hung from the walls like memories of another world. But it was the huge portrait above the mantle that caught Faunt’s eye. A fierce warrior stood there, in fluted Maximillian armour of a half a century ago and wearing a scarlet cloak emblazoned with a white cross and holding a shield that bore the devices of a star and a key.

  ‘Grandfather,’ Marie explained as she saw Faunt looking up at the canvas, ‘in his heyday. And for God’s sake, Nicholas, don’t get him started on his war stories or you’ll be up all night. I’ll fetch him. I’ll also get Cook to find you something – it’ll likely be cold mutton, I’m afraid.’

  ‘I can’t think of anything I’d like better,’ he replied with a smile.

  ‘Your business with him –’ Marie turned back and looked the man in his strange, grey eyes – ‘I will have to be present while you discuss it.’

  ‘As you wish,’ he said politely and she swept away.

  Faunt took in the portrait in more detail. Behind the warrior’s legs a fortress blazed, black clouds billowing into the blue of the sky and a fleet of infidel galleys bore down from the right. There were various shields and designs along the canvas’s edge, the arms of Starkey that Faunt had already seen over the gateway and the front door. But the oddest emblem was a hand, upright and facing the viewer. That looked like the Red Hand of Ulster, that Papist Hell across the Irish Sea. What was it doing here, on the portrait of an old soldier in deepest Hertfordshire?

  ‘Nicholas Faunt.’ He turned at the sound of his name. Marie was walking down the broad stairs into the chamber slowly, leading a white-bearded old man by the hand. ‘May I present my grandfather, Sir Oliver Starkey?’

  Now Faunt understood why Marie had insisted she be present. Oliver Starkey was as blind as a worm, groping his way forward with one hand outstretched and the other firmly fixed to his granddaughter.

  ‘Welcome to Starkey Hall, Master Faunt,’ he said.

  Faunt bowed and took the man’s hand.

  ‘We don’t get many visitors from Her Majesty. It has been a while since I was at Court. How fares Gloriana?’

  Nicholas Faunt, who had seen her recently, was not seeing the same woman that Oliver Starkey had in his mind. To the old man, the queen of England was everything the poets wrote about. She was Eliza, Pandora, Cynthia, Astraea and Belphoebe. Her face was pale as all beauties should be, her foreh
ead broad and intelligent. She danced the volta with the grace of the Muse. Her voice was the tinkling of bells that rang from her horse’s harness and her laughter could melt ice. In reality, the woman was old, tetchy, more difficult by the day. Her friends were dying around her. Her chest was scrawny and her teeth black. To watch her flirting with courtiers who could have been her grandsons was nauseating and Faunt kept away from the Presence as much as he could.

  ‘She fares well, Sir Oliver,’ he replied with a smile. ‘A brighter light I could not hope to serve. And she sends you her remembrance.’

  ‘Oh!’ The old man clasped his hands together and tears filled his pale, sightless eyes. Faunt looked closely at them. This was no ordinary blindness, the failing of the light that comes with old age. There were old scars across the bridge of his nose and down his left cheek. ‘Tell me all about it, Master Faunt.’ Starkey let his granddaughter help him into a huge chair by the fire and he kicked the dog out of the way. ‘Nonsuch, Placentia, Whitehall. Tell me, is that old rascal Christopher Hatton still up to his old tricks?’

  ‘You mistake me, sir,’ Faunt said. ‘I have been sent by Sir Francis Walsingham.’

  Starkey’s face fell. ‘Ah, the Queen’s Moor.’

  ‘Even so,’ Faunt said and smiled, vaguely tickled that the man’s detested nickname should have got this far.

  ‘I’ll be honest with you, Faunt –’ Starkey’s voice was harsher now – ‘I’ve never liked your master. An outsider. Not one of us.’

  ‘He has Her Majesty’s safety at heart, sir.’ Faunt thought he ought to defend the man. ‘As have we all.’

  ‘Yes,’ Starkey said with a sigh. ‘Yes, indeed. Well, what does he want?’

  ‘Forgive me, Sir Oliver –’ Faunt shifted in his chair – ‘I must ask you whether you own a certain gewgaw.’

  ‘Gewgaw?’ the old man repeated.

  ‘It is a small disc, sir, made of silver and representing the world.’

  The Lord of Starkey frowned and looked vaguely in the direction of his granddaughter. She looked blank.

  ‘Ah!’ Starkey’s face brightened. ‘Yes, I remember now. It was a memento sent to me by Francis Drake. Showed his circumnavigation of the globe. What is your interest, Master Faunt?’

  Walsingham’s man checked that the three of them were alone. He was good at this. Priest holes, chinks in the wall, plastering that did not match up – little things like that spoke volumes about the secret world that men like him inhabited. Rats squeaking behind the Arras, a careless tread on a loose stair – he knew all the sounds.

  ‘I hardly know where to begin,’ he said. ‘Why did Drake … Sir Francis … give this little gem to you?’

  ‘Why shouldn’t he?’ Starkey countered. ‘I invested rather heavily in the man’s adventuring. As I believe did Walsingham, not to mention Christopher Hatton, Robyn Dudley and the Lord Admiral. It was a token of his appreciation, I suppose.’

  ‘Sir Walter Mildmay?’

  Starkey blinked, his milky eyes flickering from side to side. ‘Yes, I understand he contributed. But I don’t understand …’

  ‘Could I see the globe, Sir Oliver?’ Faunt asked.

  ‘Er … yes, I suppose so. Marie …’

  ‘Don’t bother Stewart, Grandfather,’ the girl said, patting his hand. ‘I’ll get it for Master Faunt. Ah, supper.’

  The cold mutton had arrived, with wine, bread and cheese. To a man who had been on the road all day, it tasted like Heaven. But while he was eating it and Marie had gone in search of the gewgaw, Nicholas Faunt made a fatal mistake. To make small talk, he referred to Sir Oliver’s portrait and that unleashed such a torrent of memoirs that Faunt’s head was reeling with it all and his arse was numb with lack of movement.

  ‘St Elmo,’ the old man began, settling himself back with a large cup of wine in his hand. ‘Malta. Back in ’65. You know, of course, that I am a knight of St John?’

  It had crossed Faunt’s mind.

  ‘Well, the Grand Master, de la Valette, told us to hold the fort at all costs. And it did cost, Master Faunt. Many a good man. My eyes. I remember it as if it was yesterday.’

  And after several hours, as tomorrow made an appearance in the midnight courts of Starkey Hall, Nicholas Faunt did too.

  Dawn would be creeping over his window sills before long, but Faunt was still wide awake. He had lost track of the wild goose chases the Spymaster had sent him on over the years. What had Marlowe told him? A woman was dead in Canterbury on account of this trinket. Well, people were killed in Elizabeth’s England for far less worth every day – a couple of groats, a loaf of bread, a look, a chance word, a quarrel over a bill. But there was something else about this, something that involved the highest in the land. Walter Mildmay had owned one and had been robbed of it. What would be the tale of woe here, he wondered, from a hero of the siege of Malta and the knights of St John?

  He didn’t know this house. Starkey Hall was Hatfield writ small, with wings and stables, kennels and outhouses. Who knew where the old man kept his valuables? In a double strongroom like Walter Mildmay? Perhaps, but Mildmay was Chancellor of the Exchequer, a man obsessed with the colour of money and the need to keep it safe. Would Faunt have to wait until breakfast and listen to yet more of Oliver Starkey’s interminable stories before he got round once again to the jewel he had ridden for a day to find?

  Then he heard it. A click. Two. All houses sang a different song and the night was the time to hear the counterpoint, the small notes that make up the whole. He had not had time to learn the harmonies of Starkey Hall, but he knew this noise wasn’t just the music of the night. Someone was creeping into his room, unannounced, unheralded and trying their level best to be undetected. Had the man in the bed been other than Nicholas Faunt – or Christopher Marlowe, with his fine-tuned ears and almost seventh sense – the intruder might have got away with it. The curtains around the high tester were velvet and brocade, heavy and thick but the night was so hot that Faunt had left them open on the window side, so his eyes were accustomed to the moonlight filtering through the leaded panes. He heard the soft shuffle of footsteps cross the bare floorboards. He had counted sixteen paces from the door to the bed, but that was with his usual purposeful stride. Someone trying to catch him by surprise would take smaller steps. He knew that they were barefoot – he could hear the soft thud of the heel go down, the pause as the foot rolled on to the toes, for the next stealthy pace. His rapier lay at an angle against the bottom of the bed, but he had no need of that. His dagger lay unsheathed under his pillow. Nicholas Faunt slept with his wife when the fancy took him. But he slept with his knife every night, the cold steel companion of his dreams.

  He reached out with his left hand, grabbing a handful of the four-poster’s hangings. The footsteps had stopped now. Whoever it was was standing just beyond the velvet. Neither soul in that little room dared breathe. Then, Faunt struck first. He hauled the drape down, tearing it off its rings on the bed-frame and threw the heavy curtain over the figure that stood there, pulling it aside as quickly, disorienting his visitor. There was a muffled cry instantly stifled and the projectioner’s blade-tip was nicking the pale throat of Marie Starkey. She looked at him with terror in her eyes, her mouth open in a silent scream. He relented and the dagger was back under his pillow as if it had never been.

  He stood beside the girl, looking down into her face. ‘You only had to knock,’ he said, quietly. The servants would be up and about soon and he didn’t want to compromise her position in the house. He knew better than most men how much the servants loved to gossip about the mistress of the house – he had often used scurrilous, scuttled butt tales as his source of information. ‘The whereabouts of the silver globe could have waited for the morning.’

  He looked down. The girl’s nightgown had partly fallen open and her firm breasts were in full view. She covered herself up quickly and it was her turn to look down. Nicholas Faunt was as naked as the day he was born, his shirt and Venetians thrown with his doublet a
nd buskins on to a linen chest under the window. He made no attempt to cover himself but slid back the remaining curtain and looked at the girl in the first rays of light creeping from the east.

  ‘The whereabouts of the silver globe,’ she said. ‘That’s precisely the point. It’s gone.’

  ‘Gone?’ Faunt repeated. This was sounding depressingly familiar. ‘Don’t tell me. You were burgled and the curber used his hook to fish the thing out of Sir Oliver’s window.’

  ‘Curber?’ she repeated.

  He smiled. ‘Oh, it’s an old and dishonourable profession,’ he told her. ‘Curbers lift things out of windows with a specially made hook. Other people’s things, naturally.’

  ‘I could lie to you,’ she said softly.

  Faunt reached out and stroked her cheek with the tips of his fingers. ‘You could,’ he nodded, and he kissed her. She kissed him back, hard and passionate and let him slip her linen gown off her shoulders. ‘On the other hand,’ he said, ‘you could lie with me.’

  He pulled her gently towards him as he dropped back on to the bed. Now she was straddling him, her legs widening as their tongues entwined. Her breathing was jagged as he started to move against her and his fingers ran over the curves of her body. When she was ready he gave a gentle thrust and buried himself in her, letting her catch her breath before starting to move rhythmically. She moved with him and he noted with the cool, projectioner’s part of his brain which was always alert, no matter what the rest of his body might be doing, that he was not the first man whose bedroom she had visited.

  ‘The silver globe,’ he whispered in her ear as their mouths parted.

  ‘A keepsake,’ she hissed, her breasts rising and falling. ‘Given to a friend.’

  ‘The friend asked for it, specifically?’

  She nodded, unable to speak for a moment.

  He slowed his pace and she looked at him with eyes wide and pleading. ‘When was this?’

  She wriggled against him and her answer came on her ragged breath. ‘I don’t know. A week ago, perhaps. What does it matter?’