Eleventh Hour

by M. J. Trow

  Marlowe wandered the Spymaster’s inner sanctum. He had three of these: one here at Barn Elms, another along Seething Lane where he’d died, a third at Whitehall. There were secrets in them all. Walsingham had served the Queen for nearly twenty years, since Kit Marlowe was still splashing through the puddles of cobbled Canterbury on his way to school. How many secrets had been added over those years, chasing like ghosts in the dark recesses of a man’s mind and a man’s study?

  Marlowe counted four strongboxes, each one locked and bound in brass. Ursula had no keys for these. Neither did Mylles. Nicholas Faunt had a key, but Nicholas Faunt was not here. Along the shelves lay books and papers, scribblings in Walsingham’s precise, neat hand. There was one book that Marlowe recognized as code, but the fact that it was out in the open meant that the code was obsolete and had been abandoned. It would have been one of the many offerings of the code-breaker, Thomas Phelippes: worth its weight in gold while current, but burnable trash once the codes had been changed. There were other pages of parchment too, some blank. But Marlowe knew they were not really blank. He lit a candle in a dark corner, away from the leaded panes of the window and squinted to see the words that glowed there, invisibility made visible by the candle’s flame. It was a note from Thomas Wyndebank, something to do with Ireland, cattle, estates. Ireland was a thorn in Walsingham’s flesh as it was in Elizabeth’s, but there were more pressing problems. Nothing here that could explain a man’s sudden death.

  He blew out the candle, took one last look around the room and left.

  The candles blinded him at first. There were so many of them. And this in the house of the greatest Papist hunter of them all. He let his eyes get used to them, dancing in the little draughts that ran through passageways and rippled through keyholes. Beyond them he could see the half armour, blued and gilded and chased with the arms of Sidney on the breast. Intrigued, he drew closer. This was a shrine, that much was clear, and the flames’ reflections danced on the vambraces and pauldrons. There was something off, though, unfinished, missing. Half armour was commonplace, especially for portraits when a man wanted to be seen in his finery for all time, glowing on canvas for the ages. In this case, the cuisse-straps were still there, buckled on to the corselet. But there were no cuisses and the strap ends were dark-stained, the leather stiff.

  ‘Master Marlowe.’ The voice made him turn.

  ‘Mistress Sidney.’ Marlowe bowed. He had seen this girl before, when she had still been the wife of Philip Sidney. He had seen her as a widow, when Philip Sidney died. This was the first time he had seen her without her father, the man she adored. ‘Please accept my deepest condolences.’

  ‘Dead shepherd,’ she nodded and crossed beyond the candles to straighten the lance-rest on the armour. ‘Tell me, Master Marlowe, have you ever fought a battle?’

  ‘The odd duel, my lady,’ Marlowe said, ‘but a battle, no, I have not.’

  ‘I hope you never have to,’ she said. ‘It breaks hearts.’

  He let the silence stand between them. She turned away sharply and looked at him. Frances Sidney, née Walsingham, was younger than Marlowe. She was beautiful, with her mother’s gentle face and her father’s grey, glittering eyes. Black became her and, unlike her mother, she wore it unadorned, unbroken. Ursula wore pearls and beads. Frances dressed like the night. ‘You want to talk about Papa,’ she said and ushered him to a chair.

  ‘There is some doubt, my lady,’ he said, once she was sitting opposite him, ‘about Sir Francis’s death.’

  ‘That he is dead, or how he died?’ she asked.

  ‘Er … the latter,’ Marlowe said. He had barely exchanged a dozen words with this woman before, but already he realized that she spoke in riddles.

  ‘What if he were not dead?’ she asked. ‘What if all this,’ she waved to the candles, to her widow’s weeds, ‘were simply a Spymaster’s ploy to lure his enemies into the open?’

  ‘Then I would catch them, my lady, as you and Her Majesty would expect.’

  ‘Her Majesty?’ Frances all but snorted. ‘Look around you, Master Marlowe. Barn Elms, the house in Seething Lane, the movables thereof. Who owns them?’

  ‘Er … I am not privy to Sir Francis’s will, my lady,’ Marlowe said, feeling increasingly uncomfortable.

  ‘It doesn’t matter what his will says,’ she told him. ‘Papa bankrupted himself years ago in the service of Her Majesty.’ She spoke the last two words in a voice which dripped venom. ‘Mama, of course, will never tell you that. She’s too loyal, too true. Me? I see things as they are … sometimes. None of this belongs to the Walsinghams. We’ll have to leave. Do you know that Her Majesty has not even sent a letter of condolence?’

  Marlowe had no answer to that.

  ‘Why do you serve her, Master Marlowe?’ Frances asked. ‘The Jezebel, the prize bitch. Two years ago, she left her sailors to rot in their hulks along the Thames and the Medway; the sailors who had saved her realm from the Armada. No money, no physic, nothing. Not even the thanks of a grateful Queen. My father gave his life for that woman. I wonder – who will be the next?’

  It was dark now the April twilight had faded to night; a final blackbird, putting the day to bed with some running trills, stuttered to a stop as a horse clattered up the approach to the house. The sounds of the city came faintly through the encircling trees and, for all this house was on the Strand, just yards away from the river, it might have been in the deepest countryside. The horse’s rider dismounted with a flourish and beat a complex tattoo on the door, which opened smoothly on well-oiled hinges. The man slipped inside, cloak flying, spurs jingling at his booted heels. The door closed again and the blackbird finished its cadence; silence reigned in the garden of Durham House.

  Inside the dark was even more complete. From the hallway, with one single shielded candle by the door, it was clear even to a newcomer which way they should go, with just one doorway ajar, a faint light spilling like honey on the marble floor of the hall. But no one coming to Durham House that night was a stranger. They had all been there many, many times before, always under cover of darkness, always protected by the shades of night.

  The servant who guarded the door blew out the candle and made his way with the ease of long practice across the hall to the baize door in the corner which no one ever noticed. Beyond it lay everything that a great house needed to run smoothly: heat, light, bustle and people; but nothing of that must ever show itself in the murky purlieus above. His master loved the dramatic and paid the wages to ensure it. The maids wore black from head to foot. The manservants were all chosen for their pallor and solemn demeanour. When the latest addition to the upstairs staff had turned out to have one blue eye and one brown, he had been given an extra guinea a year, just because. The nights when the master had visitors meant a night off for the staff and, as soon as the last one had arrived, Scranton the steward would shoo everyone out the back way and they could hit the taverns in the town, all on the master’s guinea. A tight lip was a small price to pay for such riches.

  As the latest man to arrive entered the room and closed the door, the candle in the middle of the great table guttered in the draught but didn’t quite go out. The winding sheet of wax running down its side was pooling on the silver dish in which it sat and made oily patterns in the lamplight. It had been remarked upon before that using a black candle was perhaps an affectation too far, but when black arts may need to be called upon at any time, it paid to be careful. The five men already round the table leaned back and their faces were in shadow.

  Ferdinando Strange, the latest addition to their number, took his seat and looked around. He had jarred his back in the lists and his thigh gave him gyp, so he moved carefully. Just six of them? Why so few? Usually, some more pernickety member would insist on a quorum, but this was far from that. Strange amused himself for a moment with trying to identify his companions simply from the small bit of them visible in the faint light. Ralegh was easily identified, of course. Not only was it his house, but the li
ght glinting from his gold-embroidered doublet shone on the diamonds of the rings on the hand laid so complacently on his breast made it as clear as if he had been wearing a label. You couldn’t miss the special man, the great Lucifer.

  Strange turned his head to look more closely at the man to Ralegh’s left. No ostentation there, just a grey robe below a white beard, fur-trimmed summer and winter and looking a little moth-eaten these days. There was a stain on the sleeve just where it disappeared into the gloom at the edge of the faint light’s circle. It did not take a mind of Strange’s unusual genius to know that this was John Dee; his magus’s robes were unmistakable and everyone who ever went near him these days knew about the new little addition to his quiverful of children; little Madimi was well known to suffer from the colic, hence the stain. Why Dee didn’t just dose the child with one of his potions and have done, Strange would never know.

  Next to Dee and therefore on Strange’s immediate right, was someone who was not so easy to identify. He had clearly taken steps to be anonymous, with clothes which were masterly in their nondescript styling. No diamonds here, no clues as to identity at all. Strange looked closer and smiled a little to himself. Henry Percy, as he lived and breathed. Tucked into the breast of his doublet was a letter and a scrap of red ribbon was just visible laid against one corner. Percy went nowhere without at least one love letter about his person; he had had his heart broken more times than Strange had had hot dinners; when the man finally married and made some woman permanently miserable, the sales of scented notepaper would plummet.

  Turning to his left, Strange knew at once who was sitting there. That inky forefinger could only belong to one man. Strange, a man of moods and enthusiasms himself, could understand an obsession as well as the next man, unless that man was Thomas Hariot, who was never truly happy except when among his numbers and his equations. He knew the world could be reduced to columns, to arcane minutiae of facts and figures and he lived on the edge of discovery all the while. The answer to the universe and all its workings was just around the corner; it was simply a matter of putting everything in the right place, at the right time; Hariot was hardly ever really in a room. He sent his body about in the world, but his mind was always elsewhere.

  Hariot’s head, bent forward as always in thought, half concealed the man on his left. Only an arm was clearly visible, held stiffly on the table, the fingers flexing occasionally as if in remembered pain. Strange could hardly conceal a chuckle; it had to be Barnaby Salazar. The man was so addicted to blood rites and raising this demon and that, that there was scarce an inch of his skin unmarked by a blade and he usually was bandaged somewhere or other. But, despite his monomania, Salazar was no joke; his eyes often veiled knowledge that Strange would rather not share and he avoided close contact with the man whenever he could. There was something in his sickly pallor that reminded Strange of something that had lived too long in the dark, too long out of reach of humanity. If there was one in this company who he wished had turned down tonight’s invitation, it would be Barnaby Salazar.

  Strange was jolted from his reverie by the sound of Dee’s voice.

  ‘Thank you for coming here tonight at such short notice, gentlemen. As you will see, we are not quorate, but this is by no means a normal meeting. Sir Francis Walsingham died four days ago, as I am sure you know …’

  Hariot’s voice grated from the darkness. ‘Don’t tell me you have dragged us all here to tell us that,’ he complained.

  ‘No, not at all.’ Dee was not going to lose his temper tonight. He had promised Marlowe he would find out what lay within the goblet Faunt had pocketed at the death bedside and find out he would. He had his suspicions, suspicions he was not prepared to share with the playwright, not yet. With his reduced circumstances, he had done what he could, but had got no further than discovering that there was indeed evil in the cup when Marlowe had left him. A mouse, rescued from the kitchen cat, had died instantly with just one grain introduced between its reluctant jaws; a better death than the one it had been taken from, though Dee doubted the rodent had been particularly grateful. But with so little remaining in the goblet, he was loath to use it up with little hope of success. These men, chosen with care, would be able to do more than he ever could, save by magic. And it was important that anything they found could be proved to the satisfaction of others – it would never come before a coroner, but heads must roll. Walsingham was not a man who had been universally loved, but he had not deserved to die before his time and Dee’s spirits had told him that he had indeed been taken from this sphere before his span had run.

  Dee took the goblet from the bag on his lap and placed it in the golden pool of light. ‘This goblet held the last drink taken by Sir Francis in his last hours,’ he said. ‘I know it contained poison, but further than that, I have no means of telling what it might have been. Whether mineral or vegetable or something unknown to man before, who can say? You … gentlemen … with your different skills may be able to succeed where I have failed.’

  Ralegh reached forward for the goblet and Dee closed his hand around the stem and held it firm.

  ‘There are but traces left,’ he said. ‘If each of you can extract the smallest amount, that is all I can spare. I have promised not to let this vessel out of my possession.’

  ‘How did you come by it?’ Ferdinando, Lord Strange, needed to know with whom he was dealing. He loved all the theatricality and subterfuge of their little club – he was a patron of actors himself – but if it came to annoying anyone who could actually inflict bodily harm, well … he had many other outlets for his taste for the unusual without running that kind of risk. Poisoners rattled him nearly as much as witches.

  ‘I can’t say,’ Dee told him. ‘But suffice to say, there is no need to worry on that score. The source of this goblet means us no harm.’

  Ralegh leaned forward into the light and his handsome, raffish face was lit devilishly from below. The other men around the table leaned back, shocked that one of their number should expose his identity so boldly. Knowing who everyone was was one thing; showing your face in the light was another. Ralegh laughed at their discomfiture.

  ‘Come, now, gentlemen,’ he said. ‘Surely, we are all friends here. I would be delighted to try to solve your conundrum, Dr Dee. Henry; you are not the wizard earl for nothing. I assume you have nostrums which can detect even the most esoteric of poisons. Ferdinando, I confess I know little about your scientific leanings, but if pentagrams and posturing can bring results, I expect you to have the answer before dawn’s light is in the sky. Thomas.’ He gestured to the man on his right. ‘Numbers are the key, hmm? Am I right?’

  The silence round the table was palpable. Dee pulled the goblet towards him and made as though to pack it away again.

  ‘Don’t take on, John,’ Ralegh said, slapping the table with an open palm and making the candle jump and flicker. ‘Come with me, all of you, to my workroom and we can bottle this demon for you to all take some home. And I promise,’ he leaned forward towards Strange, ‘that at our next meeting, we can have frills, furbelows and as much secrecy as your theatrical heart desires. But for now, gentlemen, we have a poisoner to catch.’ He pushed away from the table and took up the candlestick to lead the way. ‘Shall we?’

  SIX

  Whitehall was crowded that day, the first of summer and the last of spring. There was a horse fair and the hoi polloi from the country rubbed shoulders with the knights of the shire, exercising their legs in their stroll from Westminster. The Watch were with them, rounding up the drunks and kicking the beggars back into the shadows. Flies bit the horses that stamped and whinnied in their enclosures. Men checked their teeth and ran experienced hands over their withers and fetlocks.

  But one man had no time for the horse fair. He had a horse of his own, stabled safe in Hog Lane and this morning he had more pressing business. They watched him from the shadows of the shanty hovels that ran to the river.

  ‘That’s him, all right,’ Ingram Frizer sai
d. ‘That’s Kit Marlowe.’

  His partner in crime was not so sure. ‘I don’t know, Ing.’ He spat out the tobacco he’d been chewing. ‘It’s been a while.’

  ‘You were as close to him as I was,’ Frizer told Skeres. ‘Nose to nose, we were, in the aisle of Paul’s. That man got us put away. I’d know him anywhere.’

  ‘We’ve got to be sure, Ing,’ Skeres warned.

  ‘Oh, we’ll be that, all right. Hang on, where’s he going now?’

  Marlowe was striding past the horse-lines and the fire-eaters, ignoring the jugglers and merely nodding to the urchins who were crying out in their treble voices that there was a play toward that very afternoon; that Master Edward Alleyn, no less, was to play Barabbas, the Jew of Malta, penned by that great, unrivalled playwright Christopher Marlowe. He crossed the road, waving aside the bread and ale sellers, smiled briefly at the puppets on their sticks and slipped between the smooth stones of a grey building half hidden in the shadows.

  ‘He’ll be on his own in there,’ Frizer said, doubling his pace. ‘Come on.’

  But his companion held him back. ‘Don’t be a pizzle. Look – catchpoles.’

  Skeres was right. As Marlowe slid through the open gate, a pair of large guards in the Queen’s livery crossed their halberds and stood grimly, watching the crowd.

  ‘God, you’re right,’ Frizer said. ‘Know what that is, don’t you, Nick? Only Her Bloody Majesty’s Palace of Whitehall.’

  ‘Hmm,’ Skeres nodded. ‘Friend Marlowe knows people in high places, don’t he?’