Eleventh Hour

by M. J. Trow

  One by one, they wandered away, making for Topcliffe’s gate that led to the Green.

  ‘There was no other way,’ Marlowe stopped them as the first one got there. ‘Remember the left hand, Sir Walter, in our little contretemps?’

  Ralegh nodded. ‘I had to do something desperate,’ he admitted.

  ‘So did I,’ Marlowe said. ‘Tonight at Durham House. I had tried everything else I knew, shaming you to your faces, driving you to fury. Nothing worked. So,’ he wet his thumb and wiped a smear of greasepaint off his cheek, ‘I called up Belzebub and Mephistophilis, Lucifer and all the guardians of Hell. And the frightening thing is, gentlemen, it worked.’

  Ralegh was the first to nod. He walked across to Marlowe and shook his hand. ‘It did, Marlowe,’ he said, ‘and we’ll all of us sleep easier in our beds for it. Until the next time, playmaker. You and I must talk poetry again. And Moses … let’s not forget him.’

  Henry Percy was next. ‘I underestimated you, Muses’ darling,’ he said, ‘and I’m sorry for that.’

  ‘And I’m sorry for the fact that I still have two books of yours, Your Grace.’

  Percy blanched as only a bibliophile can. ‘You have?’

  ‘The Historie of the Damnable Life and Deserved Death of Doctor John Faustus for one. The other, a small volume of hedge magic.’ Marlowe smiled. ‘The first I took because I could not resist it. The second, I kept as a clue, which I would have turned against you, had things fallen out differently.’

  ‘Keep them,’ Percy said. ‘For the first, I have the German original. For the second; I find I am not so fond of poisons as I was.’

  Marlowe frowned. ‘I thought you didn’t read German, Your Grace.’

  ‘Really?’ Percy cocked an eyebrow. ‘Whoever told you that?’

  And he was gone.

  ‘I knew it all along, of course.’ Ferdinando Strange shook Marlowe’s hand.

  ‘My lord?’

  ‘Faustus, that it was you, not this Shakestick fellow, or whatever he calls himself. The mighty line is unmistakable. I’d take it as an honour if you’d write again for Lord Strange’s Men.’

  ‘The honour would be mine, my lord.’

  Strange smiled then, as he passed, he turned. ‘Perhaps not Faustus, though, eh? I couldn’t help noticing that the ladies were a little … alarmed.’

  ‘Potatoes,’ Hariot took Marlowe’s hand. ‘Ferdinando has been telling me all about them; I had no idea. Do you think, Marlowe, that a man can stretch himself too thin? Do you think I should stick to numbers, the music of the spheres?’

  ‘I think that would be impossible for a man like you, Master Hariot. Wlibamkanni.’

  Hariot laughed his short laugh. ‘Ha, Master Marlowe. Will you never cease to amaze me? Adio, wli nanawalmezi, I think is more correct, but, yes, in certain tribes, wlibamkanni is certainly acceptable.’ And, chuckling, he slid through the gate, anxious to be back to his numbers.

  ‘I’ll not shake your hand, Marlowe,’ Salazar slunk towards the gate, ‘but I’ll give you a lift, if you like. You have no carriage.’

  ‘And no manservant. And probably, with Walsingham gone and Faustus performed for its one and only time, no future either. Thank you, but my way isn’t far. I’ll walk.’

  ‘I did it, though, didn’t I?’ Salazar had a strange look in his eye. ‘Conjuring the spirits? You saw it, didn’t you? You and Dee? You saw Walsingham’s face?’

  Marlowe nodded, his skin crawling. He would see Walsingham’s face in Salazar’s blood for the rest of his life.

  When they had all gone, Marlowe turned. He trudged into Topcliffe’s lair, past the tools of the man’s trade and found the rack-master sitting alone by candlelight.

  ‘Angels and ministers defend us,’ Topcliffe muttered when he looked at the black face, the shining horns still jutting from Marlowe’s hair.

  ‘That’s a curiously Papist oath from a psalm-singing Puritan,’ Marlowe said. ‘I have a favour to ask. Give me five minutes with Elias Carter before you rack him.’

  ‘Rack him, Master Marlowe? No, no, nothing so crude. I …’ he tapped the side of his nose, ‘No, no; no trade secrets tonight, especially to a blasphemer who told me he had never crossed a theatre’s portals.’ He stood up suddenly, a bunch of keys at his waist. ‘Five minutes,’ he said. ‘No more.’

  He patted Marlowe’s costume roughly, checking for weapons, phials of glass, Papist literature, anything his suspicious nose had been sniffing out for years. He took the candle and led the playwright along the blackness of a passageway, past grim doors without number. At one, he paused, clicked the key in the lock and swung it open. It caught on the uneven stones and he kicked it until it stood ajar.

  ‘The Devil’s come for you a little early, Carter,’ he chuckled and closed the door, leaving Marlowe alone with a killer.

  ‘You’ve brought the candle, Master Marlowe,’ Carter said. ‘No bell or book? I’m disappointed.’

  ‘Just tell me why,’ Marlowe said, facing the man already shackled to the wall. ‘Why Walsingham?’

  ‘And Jorge,’ Carter said. ‘Don’t forget Jorge.’

  ‘Him too?’

  ‘Oh, an accident, I assure you. The pastel de nata? I hoped you would accept Master Salazar’s offer of some to take home for later. When you didn’t, Jorge ate them. Like too many good men, he was expendable.’

  ‘Tom Sledd is a genius,’ Marlowe said. ‘But not even he could have pulled off the crossbow stunt, so I must assume that that too was you. How did you work that?’

  Carter managed a laugh, echoing through Topcliffe’s caverns. ‘No magic, believe me. Just the magic of gold. Money wasted, as it turned out. The Percy retainers are a loyal lot. I told one of them you meant His Grace ill and paid him handsomely, but I either didn’t pay the bastard enough or he was a useless shot. Either way, he missed.’

  ‘And Ralegh?’

  ‘Ah, yes. That turned out quite well, didn’t it? I knew that the Great Lucifer “entertained” Mistress Throckmorton most mornings and I knew how badly he would take it if he were interrupted. I half expected your corpse to be rolled out into the Strand, or to join the nameless things floating in the river. Alas, that was not to be either.’

  ‘All right,’ Marlowe nodded. ‘So I was getting too close to you for comfort. But why Walsingham? You’re no Papist.’

  ‘You know why,’ Carter said. ‘You knew it even before that little charade at Ralegh’s house.’ He chuckled. ‘You rattled them, the School of Night – I’ll give you that.’

  ‘I didn’t know,’ Marlowe admitted, ‘not entirely. And I had to know that you had acted alone. As Dee’s factotum, you could slip in and out of the corridors of power with impunity. Seething Lane, Whitehall, Barn Elms, wherever Walsingham was. Dee is the Queen’s magus; Walsingham was her Spymaster. No one doubted you, did they? No one doubted the man who took his brother’s death so stoically. And you nearly got away with it. So keen was he to sweep like a new broom that Robert Cecil swept away any crucial evidence in your case. Fortunately, he swept it into the hands of Nicholas Faunt, who swept it into mine.’ Marlowe looked with something like compassion at the man fettered to the streaming wall. ‘He was an assiduous note-keeper was Francis Walsingham. I’m working from memory now, you understand, from the notes Nicholas Faunt managed to keep hold of and left to my safe-keeping, so forgive me if I’m a little hazy. I only had an hour or so to look through them before hiding them elsewhere. Your brother was Zebulon Carter, who worked for the Merchant Venturers in godless Prague. Except, he didn’t, did he? That was just his cover story. In reality, he was an intelligencer, one of Walsingham’s golden lads. One of us.’

  ‘Yes,’ Carter grated. ‘Yes, he was. And Walsingham got him killed. He could have pulled him out; it was getting too dangerous. He should have pulled him out; he had a wife and children. Instead, nothing. Not so much as a kiss my arse.’

  ‘It’s not Walsingham’s way.’ Marlowe knew what he was talking about. ‘What are any of our
lives against that of the Queen? Our futures measured against England’s?’

  ‘Well, it’s not my way,’ Carter growled, turning his head away. It was easier to tell when he wasn’t looking into Marlowe’s face, with its expression of more sorrow than anger. ‘The doctor was in Prague, in Golden Lane with the other deviants and their black arts. Oh, don’t misunderstand me. I’d have walked through fire for that man, but you know my views on priests of the sun.’

  ‘I do,’ Marlowe nodded.

  ‘I signed on as his man, knowing he would return to England one day. And patience always was a virtue of mine.’

  There was a scream of iron as the hinges worked and the door opened, Richard Topcliffe filling the space. ‘Time’s up, Master Marlowe,’ he said.

  ‘The science,’ Marlowe ignored him, ‘some of it, at least, must have rubbed off from Dee.’

  ‘Needs must,’ Carter said, ‘when the Devil drives. Didn’t I hear that on the stage tonight, Master Marlowe?’

  ‘You might have done,’ the playwright said. ‘You might have done.’

  ‘Come on.’ Topcliffe had taken Marlowe by the arm and was leading him out of the cell.

  ‘One last question,’ Marlowe said and Topcliffe paused. ‘Did you really work alone?’

  Nothing.

  ‘Was any of the School of Night involved, in any way?’

  Carter smiled and the door slammed shut.

  ‘See you in Hell, Marlowe,’ were the last words Marlowe heard him say.

  SEVENTEEN

  The tenter-grounds stretched white under the moon as Kit Marlowe trudged along Hog Lane. No watchmen patrolled this far north and only the stray cats of Norton Folgate haunted the alleys. But there was a black shape ahead, almost filling the width of the lane. It looked like a carriage and the snort of waiting horses confirmed it. A cloaked figure sat hunched on the perch and another rested against the side, blowing smoke from an elegant curved pipe.

  ‘I didn’t expect to be having our chat about Moses so soon,’ Marlowe said. ‘I was hoping to get to bed.’

  Walter Ralegh straightened. ‘We have more pressing problems than the Old Testament, Marlowe,’ he said. ‘Cecil’s missing.’

  ‘Missing?’

  ‘When I left the Tower, I went to Whitehall. Percy’s people and Ferdinando’s wouldn’t have had the nerve to knock the little pygmy up, so I decided to do it myself. He wasn’t at home.’

  ‘Hatfield, then. The Cecils own half of England, one way or another.’

  ‘I thought that too. Until I saw the state of his chamber. The place had been turned upside down, cupboards thrown open, papers strewn about.’

  ‘What did Cecil’s people know?’ Marlowe asked. Both men were talking in whispers. Disappearing members of the Queen’s Privy Council were not often a topic of conversation in the streets of Norton Folgate.

  ‘Piss all!’ Ralegh snapped. ‘You’d think, after Walsingham, they’d look to their locks a little more.’

  ‘Percy’s people?’ Marlowe thought it was worth asking. ‘Ferdinando’s?’

  ‘As I suspected, standing like good little children until His Tininess got up. Except he’d already got up. And gone.’

  Marlowe felt the hairs on the back of his neck crawling. ‘Faunt,’ he said softly.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘May I beg a lift, Sir Walter?’ Marlowe hauled himself up into the carriage, making it rock. ‘I’ll explain as we go.’

  ‘Good,’ Ralegh said. ‘That’s why I came here. You don’t keep a tame projectioner and ignore his skills. Where are we going? I only ask so I can tell my man.’ He pointed to the roof of the carriage.

  ‘Of course,’ Marlowe said. ‘It’s either Barn Elms or Seething Lane.’ He squinted out of the window, looking up above the tall houses to the night sky. ‘It’ll be dawn before we get upriver.’

  ‘Seething Lane it is, then,’ Ralegh said. He rapped on the carriage roof and shouted to the driver. They were rewarded by a mighty lurch of the carriage and the echo of a cracking whip.

  Marlowe caught sight of his face in the polished ebony behind Ralegh’s head, opposite him on the seat and he scrubbed at the greasepaint with a cloth he found on the cushions next to him. It was soft and velvety, just perfect for the job in hand, but he froze in horror as he realized it was Ralegh’s cloak. To replace it would cost him the same as a year’s rent. He smoothed it out as best he could. ‘Sorry,’ he muttered.

  ‘Don’t worry about that old thing,’ Ralegh said. ‘It’s been in more puddles than you’ve had hot dinners.’ He picked it up and passed it back. ‘Carry on.’ He peered in the gloom. ‘I think you’ve missed a bit. Just there; along the hair …’ Marlowe plied the cloth, gingerly, as though the damage was not already done. ‘That’s better. Now, why Seething Lane?’

  ‘Or Barn Elms,’ Marlowe pointed out. ‘There’s not much of the poet in Nicholas Faunt, but he does like neat endings. Except, this time, he’s got the wrong man.’

  They rattled through the night, Ralegh agog with the story Marlowe told him now, as he had been agog with the story of Faustus earlier in the evening. The tenements of Houndsditch rolled by and dogs ran by the wheels, barking and snapping at the horses’ hoofs. Down Gracechurch they raced, the wind blowing the driver’s cloak and whipping off his hat. The carriage tilted disturbingly by St Dunstan’s in the east, then righted itself and came to a screeching, rattling halt in Seething Lane.

  Marlowe was out before Ralegh, hammering on the door he had entered so often. There were lights burning in the upper storey. No one was asleep in Walsingham’s house tonight. The door opened and Francis Mylles stood there, blinking and confused.

  ‘Master Marlowe,’ he said, surprised, and recognized Ralegh at once. ‘Sir Walter.’ He half bowed.

  ‘No time for niceties, Mylles.’ Marlowe barged past Walsingham’s man. ‘Where are they?’

  ‘Where are who?’ Mylles played the innocent.

  Marlowe spun to the old man, pushing him against the wall and holding him there. ‘I know where your sympathies lie, Mylles,’ he said. ‘You want Sir Francis’s murderer brought to book as much as the rest of us. But Faunt’s got the wrong man.’

  For an instant, Francis Mylles’ life flashed before him. For years he had served the Spymaster faithfully and well and for years, strange and dangerous men had been knocking at this very door. None more so than the four who had come knocking tonight. ‘Upstairs,’ he blurted out. ‘Sir Francis’s Inner Sanctum.’

  Marlowe and Ralegh raced each other along the passageway, Ralegh’s pattens clattering and echoing as they ran. If they had hoped for the element of surprise, that was gone now. Marlowe knew the way, if Ralegh didn’t, and he put his shoulder to the second door on the left. It crashed back and in the guttering candlelight, Nicholas Faunt was holding a wicked-looking blade at the throat of Robert Cecil.

  ‘Nicholas!’ Marlowe screamed. ‘No! It’s not him!’

  Faunt’s eyelids flickered but nothing else moved, least of all the dagger tip that tickled the man’s windpipe. ‘Of course it is,’ Faunt said. ‘It has to be. Stay out of this, Marlowe.’

  ‘It’s Dee’s man, Carter,’ Marlowe said, edging nearer. ‘He’s confessed.’

  ‘Dee’s man,’ Faunt frowned. ‘But I thought—’

  ‘That Sir Robert had Walsingham dispatched so that he could take his place,’ Marlowe finished the sentence for him. ‘Yes, I know.’

  ‘I told him what rubbish that was,’ Cecil squeaked, trying to speak without moving his throat. He cut a ridiculous figure in his nightshirt, his cap askew, pinned over Walsingham’s desk as he was. Faunt looked down at him and applied a threat more pressure to the dagger; Cecil shut up and closed his eyes.

  The Spymaster’s right-hand man assessed his options. He may or may not be able to handle Marlowe. He was pretty sure he could handle Ralegh, but both of them? What were the odds against that? Other things began to dawn on him. Marlowe was wearing some sort of costume, but was he armed? Raleg
h would be – the dagger at his back – and Ralegh would have people, a coachman at the very least. Old Mylles, who accepted fully what Faunt was about to do, would have no chance.

  ‘Do you know this man?’ Ralegh spoke for the first time, looking at Faunt.

  ‘Marlowe?’ Faunt frowned. ‘Of course I do.’

  ‘Do you trust him?’

  Faunt chuckled. ‘Your end of the court is far away from mine, Sir Walter,’ he said. ‘Best you don’t involve yourself.’

  ‘Listen to him, Faunt,’ Cecil rasped, feeling a trickle of blood run warm and sticky down from his throat and soak into the ruffled collar of his nightshirt.

  ‘You are projectioners both,’ Ralegh went on, ‘you and Marlowe. I don’t pretend to know what all that means. I know that the service you give is secret and that, under Walsingham, you kept the Queen safe. You do trust each other because you have to. Your lives and that of the Queen depend on it. If Marlowe says you’re wrong, Faunt, then you’re wrong.’

  Faunt looked at Marlowe, ignoring the terrified Cecil altogether. There were the dark eyes he had looked into before, the mind as sharp as his own but with that flash of genius. Under the strange costume beat a heart that sounded, in its way, to England’s drum, as did his own. He heard Ralegh’s words echo and re-echo in his head. ‘If Marlowe says you’re wrong … you’re wrong.’

  He took a deep breath, then he jerked back the dagger, tossed it in his hand and slid it into the sheath up his sleeve in one lightning movement. Everyone breathed a sigh of relief, not least Robert Cecil, who clutched his throat and scuttled across the room.

  ‘Kill him, Marlowe,’ he screamed, pointing at Faunt. ‘He’s a traitor!’

  ‘He’s no such thing, Sir Robert,’ Marlowe said. ‘He just thought you were.’

  ‘Ralegh!’ Cecil shouted. ‘You’re the Queen’s favourite. You can’t just stand there. You saw. Faunt tried to kill me.’