Secret World

by M. J. Trow

  Sledd knew the one. The only one in the theatre with a lock.

  ‘Get Master Watson here some ink and parchment, some bread, some wine … perhaps not wine, some water. A copy of the play so far, if we have one.’

  Sledd was pretty sure there was one somewhere about – he would try to find one with the least defacing; the company had become a little critical of Shaxsper over the last week or so and had taken it out on the pages.

  Watson stood there smiling. Something momentous had happened to his life, though for the life of him he couldn’t work out how. But he thought of his many months of unpaid rent and made up his mind to do this job, take the payment and never come near Ned Alleyn again. The man was some kind of magus, his words did things that shouldn’t be allowed. Then, a thought struck him.

  ‘I will be paid, will I?’ he asked. ‘For my work.’

  Sledd and Alleyn exchanged a look. Then, again in perfect unison, they turned to him and spoke.

  ‘Of course you will,’ they said. ‘You just need to see Master Henslowe and he’ll see you right,’ Alleyn added, speaking solo.

  Sledd turned away. He didn’t have Alleyn’s skill of hiding a smile and he didn’t want to give the game away.

  In keeping with his role as Privy Councillor and Queen’s Spymaster, Francis Walsingham owned more books than his royal mistress had wigs. But there was one of those volumes that could not be found in his library at Barn Elms, nor in his study at Whitehall, nor any of the other palaces within the Verge, the visiting circle of Her Majesty. That was because it never left his side. It was usually tucked discreetly into a secret panel in his purse, with a dagger to protect it. At best it was on whatever table was nearest to the man. And it contained the names and current addresses of every man in his employ, from high-ranking projectioners like Nicholas Faunt, to the humblest intelligencer who listened at keyholes and lurked on staircases. All of them were listed in Carolingian Miniscule, a centuries old script that only Walsingham and his Code Master, Thomas Phelippes, could understand.

  He was flicking through its well-thumbed pages that Thursday. It was Lammastide, the first day of August, although the Church of England made little of that these days and an old Puritan like Francis Walsingham hardly noticed.

  ‘All right,’ he said after a considerable silence. He looked at Nicholas Faunt, sitting alongside him in his oak-panelled chamber in the bowels of Whitehall. ‘Catlyn it is.’ He got up suddenly and crossed the room to the map pinned to the wall. It showed Gloriana’s England in all its greatness and on it was a dotted line, the route that the Queen intended to take on her Progress later that month.

  Faunt was less than positive. Of all Walsingham’s men, Maliverny Catlyn was the one he liked least. The man was no fool and he was straight as a die, but he could – and did – whinge for England. Whatever Walsingham paid him, it wasn’t enough. Did the Spymaster not realize he had a family, expenses, a certain lifestyle? Even when Faunt had pointed out to him that that applied to almost everybody, it didn’t shut the man up. Did no one realize, that he lived in Buckinghamshire and Buckinghamshire as everybody knew (except the Spymaster, apparently) was the most costly county in the kingdom. Faunt had permanent jaw-ache yawning at that one.

  ‘She insists on Buckingham –’ Walsingham was frowning at the map, imagining a mad assassin at every fork in the road, on every bend – ‘so it has to be Catlyn. He’ll be in charge for that part of the Progress.’

  There was a knock at the door and Kit Marlowe swept in. He half-bowed to them both. ‘Masters.’

  Faunt snorted, suppressing a laugh. The cobbler’s son had not acknowledged a master for years – why start now? The subtlety of it was lost on Walsingham.

  ‘Ah, Marlowe. Yes, those wretched globes. Look, I’ve already told Faunt. Forget it.’

  ‘Forget it?’ Marlowe echoed, looking at both men for an explanation.

  ‘I visited the next man on my list,’ Faunt told him. ‘Charles Angleton. He was less than helpful.’

  ‘Does he still have his jewel?’ Marlowe asked.

  ‘God only knows. I didn’t get over his threshold.’

  ‘He owns that big place, doesn’t he? By the Bridge?’

  Faunt nodded. ‘Fishmongers’ Hall stands to its right.’

  ‘What did he say when you asked him about it?’ Marlowe wanted to know.

  ‘I didn’t see him. Angleton didn’t get where he is today without serious support. The man owns a private army. I haven’t seen so many halberds in one place outside the Tower.’

  Marlowe raised an eyebrow. ‘You mean Nicholas Faunt couldn’t think of a way past all that?’

  A little muscle jumped in Faunt’s jaw. He liked Kit Marlowe. But the man was an over-reacher and one day he would tread on the wrong toes.

  ‘I told Faunt and now I’m telling you,’ Walsingham snapped. ‘Forget this nonsense about the jewels. All very entertaining, I’m sure …’

  ‘Entertaining?’ Marlowe strode forward, staring the Spymaster in the face. ‘Two people at least are dead because of these jewels. We owe it to them to—’

  ‘You forget yourself, sir!’ Walsingham bellowed. He didn’t lose his temper often but when he did, half of Whitehall knew about it. Outside in the passageway, Her Majesty’s guards checked their weapons, just in case. The Spymaster had turned an unusual shade of puce, but he recovered himself and turned back to the map. ‘At the moment,’ he said quietly, ‘I have my hands full with Her Majesty’s plans for the Progress. Faunt is part of those plans.’

  ‘And I?’ Marlowe asked.

  Walsingham looked the playwright up and down. He had no time for insubordinates today. ‘No, Marlowe,’ he said coldly. ‘I have no need of you.’

  For a moment, Marlowe stood there, then Faunt jerked his head silently towards the door and the over-reacher left.

  ELEVEN

  Marlowe knew that he had overreached himself, something he usually took care not to do, especially around Sir Francis Walsingham. But his heart had ruled his head this time and he had spoken out of turn. Since the death of Jane Benchkyne he had felt that he had a personal axe to grind in this matter. And the more he delved into it, the more the threads tangled and wove themselves around him and he knew that soon, unless he found his way out of the labyrinth, a Minotaur would come roaring out of the dark and take him down into a pit from which there may well be no escape. He needed to clear his head and for that, he needed to go to the Rose.

  To many, the Rose was a place of entertainment, but by and large they left as soon as the lights went out. For all who worked there, it could still be a place of enchantment, but more normally it was a place where they could expect to have the very life sucked out of them and to be spat back out on to the cobbles, old before their time and reeking of sawdust and greasepaint. Marlowe was drawn there in spite of himself; what did not kill him made him stronger and he was in need of some comfort and validation. Not that he would receive either at the Rose – for Philip Henslowe, you were only as good as your last play; for Ned Alleyn, you were only as good as your last death scene; for Tom Sledd …

  ‘Oh, Kit, Kit, thank Heavens above you’re here.’ He was suddenly draped in the theatre manager, being hugged and squeezed and, yes, kissed on both cheeks. ‘Where have you been?’

  Marlowe took Sledd’s forearms in a firm grip and unwrapped them from around his neck. He held him at arms’ length. He had removed the skirts but still retained La Pucelle’s plate armour above the waist, presenting a rather unusual picture. Like everything behind the scenes of the Rose, there was likely to be a good reason for what Sledd was wearing, so Marlowe decided to overlook it. ‘Busy, Tom.’ It was impossible to explain where he had been and why. It made him realize, however, how long he had been away. ‘You know me; hither, thither. All places are alike and every earth is fit for burial.’

  ‘There you are, you see!’ Sledd punched him in the shoulder.

  ‘Ow. There what are … is?’

  ‘You. You s
peak better lines when you are just talking than Shaxsper can conjure up after days with a quill and parchment.’

  ‘That’s good of you, Tom, but why bring Will into it?’

  ‘Because we’ve been looking for him for weeks, to try and do something about this play he has left us with. He wrote most of it and we rehearsed. I can’t say we were very excited by it, but it was going as well as you might expect. Ned grabbed the king’s part, only to find that he wasn’t the hero.’

  Marlowe looked across at the wall of the auditorium, which had a handbill pasted to it. ‘It seems to be called –’ he leaned forward and squinted in the poor light – ‘Henry VI.’ He straightened up and looked back at the stage manager. ‘That seems straightforward enough.’

  Tom opened his mouth to explain, then gave it up as a bad job. ‘Kit,’ he said, ‘nothing is straightforward in this farrago. It doesn’t seem to have a proper start, even. We spent days looking for the missing pages, until someone said they thought this was all there was. And the ending … diabolical.’

  ‘Well, that’s good. The groundlings love a bit of fire and brimstone. That’s why Master Henslowe had that trapdoor built, wasn’t it? For a bit of Demon King work.’

  ‘Yes,’ Sledd said with a sigh. ‘But I don’t mean “diabolical” –’ he put two fingers to his head like horns and gave vent to a spine-chilling laugh – ‘I mean diabolical.’ This time he turned down the corners of his mouth and slumped his shoulders. ‘As in terrible, awful, they throw vegetables.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘So that’s why we’ve been looking for you.’

  Marlowe backed away, hands up. ‘No, Tom, oh, no, you don’t. Let the lad win his spurs. He wrote it, let him put it right.’ He paused, his head cocked like a dawn-treading sparrow after a worm. ‘Did I hear someone calling?’

  Sledd listened and then said, ‘No, I don’t think so. Where was I? Yes, well, we would love to let him put it right, Kit, but he seems to have disappeared.’

  That didn’t sound like Will Shaxsper to Marlowe. Here was a man for whom no ripple of applause was too small. It seemed unlikely that he would not stay around for his first play’s opening. ‘Was he well when you saw him last? Not in love, or anything?’

  Sledd smiled. ‘Will is always in love, Kit,’ he said. ‘But no more than usual, no. You wouldn’t think he was a married man with three children, would you?’

  Marlowe thought back to other married men he knew, with or without three children, and could come to no consensus as to what made typical behaviour. ‘He’s an actor, Tom,’ he said. ‘No one expects actors to be normal.’ He stopped again. ‘There definitely is someone calling, you know.’

  ‘Probably someone out in the street,’ Sledd said, hurriedly. ‘But, Kit, have a heart. Now you’re here, and Will is not, couldn’t you just look at his last few pages?’

  ‘I can never read his writing,’ Marlowe hedged.

  ‘Nor can we,’ Sledd agreed. ‘Watch the play tonight, then. Tell me what you think. It may be that it just needs … oh, I don’t know. Another character. Just one more speech, perhaps. It just isn’t working as it is.’

  A large glob of paint suddenly fell from the flies and landed between them.

  Sledd looked up. ‘Dick!’ he yelled. ‘If you do that one more time, you’ll be looking for new employment.’ He turned back to Marlowe. ‘Sorry, Kit,’ he began. ‘You just can’t get …’

  But Marlowe had gone.

  He had slipped out between two leaning flats and was treading slowly and silently down the corridor that ran behind the stage. He was listening intently and pausing every step or so, triangulating on the sound which he now knew for sure he could hear.

  ‘Kit? Kit, is that you?’

  He couldn’t be sure, but it sounded a lot like Thomas Watson.

  ‘Tom?’ He spoke quietly but still the answer came.

  ‘Oh, thank God in Heaven. Kit, I’m in here.’ A tapping sounded from along the corridor and Marlowe moved towards it.

  He put his mouth to the keyhole. ‘Tom? Tom Watson? What on earth are you doing in there?’

  ‘It’s a long story …’ Watson sounded weary and there was something else odd about his voice that Marlowe could not quite place for a moment, then it fell into place. For the first time in many a long and bibulous month, Thomas Watson was stone cold sober.

  ‘Tom, stand away from the door,’ Marlowe said. ‘I’m going to break it in.’

  ‘NO!’ Watson’s voice came out as a hysterical squeak. ‘There isn’t room to swing a cat in here. You’ll hurt us both if you do that. Go and get a key.’

  Marlowe thought for a moment. It had to be Alleyn – no one else would do this. But Tom Sledd would have the key. ‘Hold on, Tom,’ he said to Watson through the door. ‘I’ll be back.’ He just stopped himself from telling Watson not to go away; he wasn’t sure how much of his sense of humour was still intact.

  Tom Sledd was overseeing the swabbing of the stage to remove the paint blob when Marlowe reappeared.

  ‘Oh, there you are, Kit,’ he said, with a smile. ‘Call of nature?’

  ‘No.’ Marlowe’s voice sounded like the thud of a coffin lid and Sledd looked up, anxiously.

  ‘Problem?’ he said, quietly, shooing the maidservant and her bucket away.

  ‘Why?’ Marlowe said, speaking with unnatural calmness, the calm before a storm. ‘Why do you have Thomas Watson locked up backstage?’

  ‘Thomas Wa …? He’s not locked up,’ Sledd said with a laugh. ‘That door sticks sometimes, he’s just …’

  ‘Locked. In.’ Marlowe looked dangerous.

  ‘Kit, I can explain.’ Sledd was already scurrying off the stage, rummaging for his keys. ‘We needed someone to finish Shaxsper’s play. And Watson came looking for you.’

  Marlowe held the man back. ‘Looking for me? Why?’

  ‘Something about a man looking for you. Something like that. Anyway –’ Sledd pulled away and started off towards backstage again – ‘I’ll have him out in two shakes of a lamb’s tail and then you can ask him yourself.’

  Marlowe stood behind the flustered stage manager as he struggled with the keys. After a lot of muffled oaths and confusion, Watson was finally free. He turned to Sledd and took a deep breath, but thought better of it. He thrust some inky pages at the man and then turned on his heel. ‘Kit,’ he said, ‘there’s a man after you. He’s really angry!’

  ‘But apart from angry, Tom.’ Watson had calmed down a little after a few tankards of ale at the Mermaid and Marlowe was trying to pick the facts from the embroidery. ‘And allowing for the fact that he couldn’t really be that tall –’ he waved his hand in the air high above his head – ‘can you give me any other clues?’

  The problem with being Kit Marlowe was that the list of men that were really angry was a long one. He needed it to be fined down a little: age, height, colour of hair. A name would have been more help still, but Watson had little to add on any level. His incarceration with only props, parchment, ink, bread and water for company seemed to have driven things he once knew completely from his head. He spread his hands apologetically. ‘I really am so sorry, Kit. I’m a bit flustered, to be brutally frank. One minute, I was looking for you at the Rose, then the next minute, Ned Alleyn is muttering in my ear. After that, it’s all rather a blur.’

  ‘Yes. Alleyn will do that to a person.’ Marlowe clapped Watson on the shoulder and took a draught of ale. ‘I actually pretended to be you, just briefly, the other day.’

  Watson spilled his drink in his agitation. ‘Kit! Who to?’

  The playwright chuckled. ‘Don’t worry, Tom. It was a long way from here. And it wasn’t to a husband, as far as I know. But it just goes to show; I meet a lot of people. A lot of them end up angry. We’ll wait and see if he turns up again but, Tom, if he does, try and find out who he is, please!’

  ‘Sorry, Kit.’ Watson buried his nose in his tankard. ‘Are you home now, for a bit? Only, there is no food in the house, and I hav
e no money …’

  ‘Tom!’ Kit reached for his purse and passed across some coins. ‘Living with you is a little like being married, I should think, but without even the smallest fringe benefit.’

  ‘Married!’ Watson suppressed a shudder. Least said, soonest mended on that score.

  ‘As for me, I am home now for a while, I think. Sir Francis is arranging a Progress …’

  ‘A Progress?’ Watson’s eyes lit up. The owners of the houses the Queen visited had often need of a singer of songs. ‘Do we know where she’s off to?’

  ‘Walsingham would know. Are you still on speaking terms?’

  ‘Yes, yes, quite friendly. We came to an agreement on that little matter.’

  ‘Yes, well, Thomas, how often must I tell you? Sir Francis does not appreciate his people making free with his daughter. And her so recently a widow …’

  Watson waved the poet to be quiet. ‘Sshh, Kit, ssshh! It was a dalliance, nothing more.’

  ‘I think that’s what I mean,’ Marlowe pointed out. ‘However, the Progress has meant that all other matters are put to one side. Including mine.’

  Watson looked hard at his friend. ‘That doesn’t sound like you,’ he observed.

  ‘No, it doesn’t, I know. But I don’t know how to go about the next step. It needs men, resources, time I just don’t have.’

  ‘I could help!’ Watson looked brightly at Marlowe, like a puppy eager to please.

  ‘Thank you, Tom, but I couldn’t ask it of you. You will have songs to sing, women to dally with. A Progress wouldn’t be the same without you. But,’ Marlowe continued with a sigh, ‘I feel I want to carry on with this. There is a woman dead, who did nothing to deserve it. And a man, who, if he had guilt on his conscience, had paid his dues many times over when his end came. I want to put things right, for them.’

  ‘It does you credit, Kit,’ Watson said.

  ‘And,’ Marlowe added with a laugh into his ale, ‘Sir Francis Walsingham got under my skin. I want to show him what I’m made of.’