Crimson Rose

by M. J. Trow

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  A Selection of Titles from M.J. Trow

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  A Selection of Titles from M.J. Trow

  The Inspector Lestrade Series

  LESTRADE AND THE SAWDUST RING

  LESTRADE AND THE MIRROR OF MURDER

  LESTRADE AND THE KISS OF HORUS

  LESTRADE AND THE DEVIL’S OWN

  The Peter Maxwell Series

  MAXWELL’S CHAIN

  MAXWELL’S REVENGE

  MAXWELL’S RETIREMENT

  MAXWELL’S ISLAND

  The Kit Marlowe Series

  DARK ENTRY *

  SILENT COURT *

  WITCH HAMMER *

  SCORPIONS’ NEST *

  CRIMSON ROSE *

  * available from Severn House

  CRIMSON ROSE

  M.J. Trow

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  First published in Great Britain and the USA 2013 by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

  9 – 15 High Street, Sutton, Surrey, England, SM1 1DF.

  eBook edition first published in 2013 by Severn House Digital

  an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited.

  Copyright © 2013 by M.J. Trow and Maryanne Coleman

  The right of M.J. Trow to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  Trow, M.J.

  Crimson rose. – (A Kit Marlowe mystery; 5)

  1. Marlowe, Christopher, 1564-1593–Fiction.

  2. Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616–Fiction.

  3. Walsingham, Francis, Sir, 1530?-1590–Fiction.

  4. Serial murder investigation–Fiction.

  5. Great Britain–History–Elizabeth, 1558-1603–Fiction.

  6. Detective and mystery stories.

  I. Title II. Series

  823.9’2-dc23

  ISBN-13: 978-1-78029-053-9 (cased)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-78010-453-9 (epub)

  Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.

  This eBook produced by

  Palimpsest Book Production Limited,

  Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland

  ONE

  The funeral procession blocked the Fleet Ditch and ran all the way up Ludgate Hill. Along Holborn the people lined the route, bareheaded and silent, the brave few crossing themselves as the coffin passed, watching the dead man’s cousins and his friends struggling under the weight. A pale sun gilded his arms, the cloth of gold dazzling on the canopy and the tabards of the heralds. Portcullis carried his gilded spurs aloft, Rouge Dragon his great helm with its porcupine crest; Richmond held his shield and Clarenceux, the King of Arms, brought up the rear with his gauntlets.

  No one carried his field armour, ripped and peppered with shot, and no one spoke of the thigh defences which, had he worn them that bleak October day at Zutphen, would have saved his life.

  At the Ditch, which gave off its putrid smell even in a winter as cold as this, a small knot of horsemen joined the procession, all in black, their beards rimed with frost because they had been there all morning. The oldest of them turned his bay into the winding line alongside a melancholy-looking man on a grey.

  ‘Morning, Francis,’ the older man muttered through frozen lips and teeth clenched against chattering. ‘Cat got your tongue?’

  Francis Walsingham turned to his companion with the kind of contempt he usually reserved for Papists. ‘I am burying my son-in-law, my Lord,’ he hissed.

  Perhaps the hiss was a little too loud because Clarenceux turned and frowned at him under his hood.

  ‘Of course you are.’ Lord Burghley was the Queen’s Chief Secretary, a man of sensitivity, subtlety and understanding. He was usually kinder, but he had been sitting on the most uncomfortable saddle in the world for the last hour and he’d lost all feeling in his feet. ‘We will all miss Philip.’

  Walsingham nodded. They would. Philip Sidney was that rarest of men; a courtier, poet, wit and gentleman. His word was his bond, his hand firm, his eye bright. With Philip, what you saw was what you got. He was perhaps the one man in England who Francis Walsingham would dare turn his back on and that included the Chief Secretary who ambled beside him now, carrying out his civic duty.

  With difficulty, Burghley twisted in the saddle. Behind him rode the Privy Council: Hatton, Essex, Leicester, the Lord Admiral – the men who called the tune in Elizabeth’s England; the men who knew where the bodies were buried. Beyond them were the hangers-on, the hopefuls who hadn’t yet read Philip Sidney’s will, the genuinely bereaved who missed already the man’s kind words, the lilt of his verse, the thud and crash of his lance in the lists. And beyond that the captains of the Trained Bands, their arquebusiers’ butts dragging and bumping in the ruts of the frozen mud, their pikes trailing behind them in respect for the newly dead.

  ‘London’s behaving itself today,’ the Chief Secretary murmured, eyeing the crowd. He reined in his horse as the procession jolted to another halt. The outriders had reached the Cross now and the great bulk of St Paul’s blotted out the sun beyond it. The Queen’s Yeomen were here in their scarlet with their halberds lowered. White-surpliced priests fluttered in all directions like so many moths, drawn to Sidney’s flame, still burning wherever good men gathered.

  ‘I wanted to talk to you about Marlowe,’ Burghley said, resting both hands on the pommel of his saddle. If this delay went on much longer he’d have to whip out the copy of Aristotle he always carried in his saddlebag and to Hell with how it looked.

  ‘Marlowe?’ Walsingham blinked.

  Burghley turned to him, a little surprised by the apparent absence of mind. This man, after all, was the Queen’s Spymaster. He knew everybody. He forgot nothing. That was the way with spymasters.

  ‘Christopher Marlowe,’ Burghley reminded him. ‘One of your people, isn’t he?’

  Walsingham turned back to watch the pall-bearers negotiating the steps. Men in the Queen’s livery, her rose on their sleeves, gathered at the roadside to take their horses. ‘He is,’ he nodded. ‘What of him?’

  ‘I had a letter,’ Burghley told him, ‘from a Professor Johns, formerly of the University of Cambridge. Know him?’

  The Spymaster was on form again. ‘Marlowe’s tutor at Corpus Christi. Or he was. I gather there was some sort of falling out.’

  Burghley nodded. That was the way of domini. They squabbled like children over anything – Plato, Ramus, Erasmus, Colet, More – anything that was absolutely irrelevant to the real world. Except Aristotle, of course. Burghley fully believed that, of the Ancients, that man alone had got things right.<
br />
  ‘What of Johns?’ Walsingham asked. He didn’t know the man by sight, but he knew Kit Marlowe and, friend or no, anything to do with him was likely to be the Spymaster’s business too.

  ‘He’s heard that the powers that be in Corpus Christi are refusing to grant Marlowe his Masters degree.’

  ‘On what grounds?’ Walsingham asked.

  ‘On the grounds that he hasn’t been there overmuch of late.’

  Walsingham’s horse tossed its black-ribboned head and snorted as though it was following the conversation intently. ‘We both know why, my lord,’ its rider said eventually, studiously looking away to the sky peeping through the rooftops to Burghley’s left.

  ‘Oh, quite, quite,’ the Chief Secretary agreed, picking a non-existent speck from the back of his glove. ‘I’ve written to Chancellor Copcott.’

  ‘Hmm … saying?’ Walsingham was now minutely interested in a ribbon in his horse’s mane.

  ‘Usual. Dominus Marlowe … across the sea to Rheims … behaved impeccably and deserves to be rewarded for his faithful service … etc, etc. Yes,’ Burghley paused, as though rerunning his words back through his head. ‘Yes, just the usual. I just wanted to make sure you were happy with that.’

  Walsingham tried not to show his surprise. Perhaps Burghley was feeling particularly avuncular today. The Chief Secretary had never bothered about such things before. ‘That he was abroad on the Queen’s business? Certainly. But I understood Copcott to be sound – one of us?’

  ‘Oh, he is, he is,’ Burghley assured him, urging his horse forward as the space became available. ‘It’s the usual thing, Francis. The University Convocation. God forbid,’ he jerked his head towards his Privy Council waiting behind, ‘we should ever be governed by committees, eh?’

  Walsingham looked out over the heads of the people, standing like an unwashed wave, stunned into silence by the spectacle, by the rich and powerful who were trickling into St Paul’s. ‘Perhaps we’d be better off with democracy?’ He raised an eyebrow at the Chief Secretary, who shuddered at the prospect. Either Walsingham was joking or it was time to look at some sort of rest home for him, perhaps Bedlam.

  ‘I did remind Copcott and his Convocation that they should keep their noses out of affairs about which they knew bugger all, of course.’

  ‘Of course.’ Walsingham steadied his grey as the groom took its bridle. ‘Now, my lord, if you’ll forgive me, I have a son-in-law to bury.’

  ‘Absolutely.’ Burghley let himself be helped down from the saddle and slipped the copy of Aristotle from his saddle bag to his sleeve. It was going to be a long day.

  TWO

  They watched him for a while in Paul’s Walk. Ingram Frizer took note of the scarlet doublet, slashed with satin, but he also saw and noted the sword hilt, gleaming at his hip like a coiled snake. The man was … what? Twenty-two? Twenty-three? Maybe more; his dark eyes weren’t missing much as he took in the sights, looking ever upwards to where the tall pillars disappeared into shadow, pierced with mote-filled shafts of light which ended their journey from the high windows as a twinkle on the trinkets of the market stalls. Nicholas Skeres saw the Collyweston cloak, the elaborate pattens and the brocaded Venetians. A sheep for the fleecing. A lamb to the slaughter.

  ‘Stranger in red,’ he muttered out of the corner of his mouth, the trick he had learned in the Compter and Newgate. ‘Mediterranean Aisle.’

  ‘I see him,’ Frizer mumbled back in the same way. ‘I’m not so sure.’

  The bigger man looked down at him. ‘If that’s not a gull, I’ll eat my hat. And, talking of eating, we haven’t, since yesterday.’

  ‘It is Lent,’ Frizer pointed out.

  ‘Bollocks. Where’s he from?’

  ‘Not from here, that’s for sure. He’s English, though.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘He’s reading the inscriptions on the tombs.’

  ‘Ah.’ Skeres smiled the smile of one who has spotted the weakness in an argument. ‘But is he reading the English or the Latin?’

  Frizer fell back on surer ground. ‘He’s a gent and no mistake. Doesn’t like parting with his money, though.’

  They watched the stranger as he drifted past the stalls. He sniffed the cheese, dabbed a damp finger into the tobacco and tasted it. He held a carafe of Burgundy up to the light and shook his head. They started to crowd around him, the lavender sellers and the bakers, the perfume men and the silversmiths. Frizer and Skeres couldn’t read his lips in the Babel of St Paul’s but he was smiling at everyone, when he wasn’t standing, awe-inspired by the biggest church in the world.

  ‘Three groats says he’s a University wit,’ Skeres said, eyes narrowing.

  ‘Where from?’

  Skeres’ face contorted with the effort of guesswork. ‘Oxford.’

  ‘No.’ Frizer folded his arms and leaned against a pillar. ‘I mean, where are you going to get three groats?’

  Skeres chuckled. ‘Him. Or my name isn’t Galamiel Ratsey.’

  ‘Oh, it’s the Ratsey Lay, is it?’

  ‘I think it’s time. A little bit of Find the Lady first, though, just to break the ice.’

  ‘Which college?’ Frizer asked.

  ‘Oh, come on, Ingram. How the Hell …? All right.’ Skeres drew himself up to his full height, knowing a challenge when he heard one. ‘Brasenose. But that’s a long shot, mind. You ready?’

  ‘As far as I’ll ever be.’ Frizer sighed and followed his friend out into the Aisle, jostling with every trader in London and keeping their hands tight to their purses. They wove their way between the clutter of stalls, edging nearer until they parted company, one to the right, one to the left. It was Skeres who reached the stranger first and he collided with him, begging his pardon, pulling off his hat and dusting the man down.

  ‘A thousand pardons, sir,’ he beamed. ‘I wasn’t looking where I was going.’

  ‘No, no.’ The stranger smiled back. ‘My fault, I assure you.’

  ‘Couldn’t help noticing,’ Frizer was at his elbow, penning the man in between a table and a pillar, ‘you were admiring the architecture. Finest Gothic.’

  ‘Most impressive,’ the stranger said.

  ‘Is this your first time to St Paul’s, Master … er …?’

  ‘Marlowe,’ the stranger said. ‘Christopher Marlowe. And, yes, indeed. This is my first visit.’ He smiled again and stepped to one side, to move on.

  Frizer stepped neatly to stay in front of him. ‘Ingram Frizer,’ he said, extending a hand. ‘And this is my associate, Nicholas Skeres.’

  ‘Gentlemen.’ Marlowe shook hands with them both. ‘It has been delightful, but …’ He made general motions with his head and hands, indicating that time was pressing, that he really should be going, that Skeres’ breath could stop the planets in their courses.

  Skeres still held his hand. ‘It’s a little hobby of mine,’ he said, ‘to try to guess where a stranger has come from. I take you to be a University man? A scholar?’

  ‘Astonishing!’ Marlowe was open-mouthed with amazement, but managed at last to prise his hand free. ‘I really must …’

  ‘Do I detect an Oxford accent, Master Marlowe?’

  ‘Cambridge,’ Marlowe corrected him. ‘Corpus Christi.’

  ‘Oh.’ Skeres’ face fell.

  ‘Is there a problem with Corpus Christi, Master Skeres?’ Marlowe could think of a long list of them, but how they could concern these two ne’er-do-wells was trickier to guess.

  ‘Corpus Christi, sir, no. But Cambridge. If you’re a Cambridge man, you’ll know of …’ He paused for the full effect. ‘Galamiel Ratsey.’

  Marlowe caught his breath. ‘Ratsey the highway robber?’

  Skeres turned a shade paler. ‘The same. I – and it pains me still – I met Master Ratsey on the road only last week. I’d rather meet the Devil himself.’

  ‘They say he wears a Demon’s mask,’ Marlowe said.

  Skeres clutched his doublet. ‘He does, Master Marlowe, h
e does. Like a basilisk it is, grotesque. But you can’t look away.’

  Marlowe shook his head in sympathy. ‘At least you aren’t turned to stone, Master Skeres.’

  ‘No.’ Skeres shuddered. ‘Just lighter by my entire purse and a ring my father gave me on his deathbed.’ He paused to dash away a tear. ‘I haven’t eaten for nearly three days.’

  Marlowe looked back at him. There was care in his face, concern, even. What there wasn’t was any coin coming from his purse into Skeres’ discreetly extended palm. Frizer knew a dead horse that would take no more flogging and changed tack. ‘We do still have a dribble of wine, Master Marlowe. Won’t you join us in a goblet? And perhaps a little game?’

  Marlowe frowned. ‘What, here? In the church?’

  ‘Of course.’ Frizer laughed. ‘This is Paul’s Walk, the antic of tails to tails and back to backs. Look about you, Master Marlowe, the place is busier than parliament. There’s nothing you can’t buy here.’

  ‘I thought Jesus cleared the temple,’ Marlowe said, straight-faced and wide-eyed.

  The others looked at each other.

  ‘If it’s the Temple you want,’ Frizer said, ‘that’s along the river a way.’

  A silence. ‘No, no.’ Skeres laughed. ‘If it’s divine service you’re after, that’s that way,’ he waved his hand to his right, ‘in the choir stalls.’ He closed to his man, laying a firm hand on his shoulder and sitting him down on a stool. It and the table in front of him had a price tag on it. ‘I didn’t have you down for a Puritan,’ he said.

  Skeres clicked his fingers and Frizer reached below the table and came up with three grubby goblets and a stone bottle, from which he poured three gurgling draughts of sack. ‘Do you know Find the Lady, Master Marlowe?’

  Marlowe looked confused. ‘Is that a play?’ he asked. ‘I do like a play.’

  ‘A sort of play,’ Skeres chuckled. ‘Show him, Ingram.’

  Frizer sat down at the table, turfing out a begging cripple who was half-sitting on the stool. From nowhere he produced three cards – an Ace, a King and a Queen – which he laid out in front of them.