by M. J. Trow
Faunt was suddenly serious, leaning forward and staring into Marlowe’s dark eyes. ‘Then what were you doing in Blackfriars?’ he asked. ‘The house in Water Lane.’
It was Marlowe’s turn to pause. ‘How did you know I was there?’ he asked.
Faunt burst out laughing and even Marlowe found himself smiling. ‘All right,’ the playwright said, ‘you had me followed. I must be slipping. I didn’t notice.’
‘Ah, you’re just a bit rusty, that’s all. But seriously, Kit, I need to know what you were doing there.’
‘Why?’
‘Secrets of State.’ Faunt looked at him with a level gaze. If any phrase was guaranteed to bring a conversation to an end, that was it.
‘All right.’ Marlowe nodded. ‘One confession for another. You tell me what you were doing at the Rose the other day and I’ll tell you why I was at Blackfriars.’
‘To see the play.’ Faunt smiled. ‘Your Tamburlaine. I was impressed.’
‘Liar,’ Marlowe said, folding his arms and waiting for more.
‘You don’t think I’d be impressed?’
‘I don’t think Tamburlaine is your sort of entertainment, Nicholas,’ Marlowe said. ‘And besides, there was no play on when you went with a gathering of backers into Philip Henslowe’s box office.’
‘Ah.’ Faunt set his mouth in a rueful line. ‘I take it all back. You’re not rusty at all. What if I told you that I was at the theatre in connection with the house in Blackfriars?’
‘Not a riddle, Nicholas, please.’ Marlowe raised his free hand in supplication. ‘It was a long journey in that boat and I was so cold I all but lost the will to live. Your note said it was urgent that you see me. So, what is it that it couldn’t wait another minute?’
‘The house in Blackfriars.’
Marlowe downed his goblet and stood up. ‘I doubt I’ll get a boat at this hour. Any chance of borrowing one of Walsingham’s horses? I hear he’s got sixty-nine of them in the stables.’
‘All right,’ Faunt relented. It wasn’t something he did often and he didn’t do it well. He refilled Marlowe’s goblet and sat him down. He looked into the man’s eyes. ‘Can you keep a secret?’ he asked.
Marlowe raised an eyebrow, but said nothing. He already knew the whereabouts of enough bodies to bury Nicholas Faunt and, quite possibly, Francis Walsingham too.
‘The house in Blackfriars is a safe house. It belongs to us – the government, I mean. Oh, if you look up the lease in the Stationers’ Office you’ll find the owner is one Ralph Crabtree.’
‘And?’
‘Lord Burghley, to you.’
‘I see.’
‘The rent is paid to Roger Whetstone.’
‘Francis Walsingham?’
‘Christopher Hatton,’ Faunt corrected him.
‘So, various members of the Queen’s Privy Council are hiring out property under assumed names to unknown actors and girls with a head full of air,’ Marlowe reasoned. ‘Bizarre, but hardly a crime.’
‘No, you miss the point.’ Faunt leaned forward. ‘It’s a safe house. It’s a place we put people for interrogation purposes … Oh, not the unpleasant stuff – all that’s a matter for Waad and Topcliffe at the Tower. No, it’s a house where Walsingham has his little fireside chats. You’ve heard of Father Walter Gervaise?’
‘The Jesuit.’ Marlowe nodded. ‘Tried to kill the Queen two years ago. He died while trying to escape.’
‘You see, there you have it.’ Faunt leaned back, sampling the Rhenish again. ‘Wrong on all three counts. And you’re supposed to be one of us.’
‘I told you …’
‘Yes, yes, I know.’ Faunt cut the man short. ‘You’ve left the service. Put it all behind you. Yes, I know.’
‘So … Gervaise?’ Despite himself Marlowe couldn’t contain his curiosity.
‘Was a Jesuit until Walsingham had a word in the house at Blackfriars. I don’t know why we keep Topcliffe and his infernal machines. Just a word from Walsingham is all that’s required. No, he didn’t try to kill the Queen – that was just a story we put about, to smoke out a few others, as it were. As for the stories of his demise, well, they too are much exaggerated. He is currently – and I shouldn’t really be telling you this – reporting on our behalf from Padua. When he’s not there, he’s living with Mistress Gervaise and all the little Gervaises somewhere out on the Essex marshes. Well, you can’t have everything.’
‘I see.’ Marlowe felt enlightened.
‘I wonder if you do.’ Faunt frowned. ‘You didn’t know about the house? Its purpose, I mean?’
‘No,’ Marlowe admitted. ‘This is the first I’ve heard of it. I’d gone there over the Eleanor Merchant business.’
‘Yes.’ Faunt nodded solemnly. ‘Eleanor. A great loss.’
‘You knew her?’
‘Of course,’ Faunt said, reaching for one of Walsingham’s pipes from the rack and looking around for a tobacco jar. ‘She ran the house for us.’
‘Did she?’ Marlowe was sitting up now, frowning. ‘Is that why someone killed her?’
‘I thought Shakespeare killed her.’
‘So does the High Constable,’ Marlowe nodded, ‘and half of London.’
‘Do you drink smoke, Kit?’ Faunt asked, ramming the tobacco into the bowl.
‘All they that don’t love tobacco are fools,’ Marlowe said.
‘Then light yourself a pipe. You and I have some secrets to swap, I believe.’
‘You first.’ Marlowe smiled, reaching for another of Walsingham’s pipes.
Faunt smiled too. He could fence all night with Marlowe, with just a short break for supper. He recognized much of himself in the deadly young man sitting with him; as he had been ten or a dozen years ago, keen to make his mark in a dangerous world. He never underestimated men like Marlowe, perhaps because there weren’t any men like Marlowe. Not at all. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘So Eleanor Merchant was on our payroll; that made her a target. Especially given the nature of her house.’
‘I took it to be a bawdy house,’ Marlowe said. ‘Night visitors. Whispers after dark.’
‘That’s what we hoped the world would think.’ Faunt nodded. ‘The problem was that, to put off the long noses of the Hugh Thynnes of this fair city of ours, we had to make it seem as if it was an outwardly respectable place – that’s where friend Shakespeare comes in. The only other lodger is a printer, a man named Calshott.’
‘Not one of ours?’
Faunt showed the mild surprise in his face, wreathed in smoke as it was. Ours. Was the wayward sheep returning to the fold in spite of himself? ‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘The man’s an innocent. Works at the sign of the Moor’s Head in Paternoster Row. If word got out that others used the house, everyone would assume what you did – that Mistress Merchant presided over a place of ill-repute. Eleanor’s mistake, if that’s what it was, is that she didn’t take her simpler sister into her confidence. When I spoke to the girl she clearly didn’t have a clue as to what was going on under what is now her own roof. We’ll have to move on, of course. I’ve told Walsingham as much.’
‘You said Eleanor was a target.’ Marlowe blew rings to the ceiling. ‘For whom?’
‘Well, that’s the Devil of it,’ Faunt said. ‘I don’t know. Some pretty slippery customers have used that house over the years – and the outcome isn’t always as happy for us as Father Gervaise. Some men have refused to be turned. Some have got away. Even so, even if they had some grievance, why pick on the woman who provided bed and board? Walsingham, certainly, and me, but Eleanor? No, this is not about revenge.’
‘So what is it about?’
‘You’ve been to the house. What did you make of it? The furniture and fittings, I mean?’
Marlowe thought back. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘Expensive. I don’t know what Shaxsper was paying in rent, but I doubt he could afford it. Of course, she had her salary from you.’
Faunt chuckled. ‘Eleanor wasn’t a field agent, Marlowe. What we paid h
er wouldn’t feed one of Walsingham’s horses for very long. It might not even feed one of his hawks.’
‘But the jug …’
Faunt looked up. ‘The jug? What jug?’
Marlowe knocked out the pipe on the hearth. He enjoyed drinking smoke but it didn’t clear the head, as many men claimed. And he needed a clear head now. ‘A silver jug,’ he said, watching Faunt intently. ‘Just less than a cubit high. Solid silver. Wrought with writhing figures and the Devil’s face. Dee thought …’
‘Dee?’ Faunt sat upright. ‘What has he to do with all this?’
Marlowe looked at him with a wry expression. ‘John Dee has to do with everyone, Nicholas. Rather like your good self, in that respect.’
‘He’s at Whitehall, isn’t he?’
‘On his way abroad, yes. I showed him the jug.’
‘Eleanor’s jug?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why?’
‘Because … because there is something about it. Something that says it is the reason – or part of the reason – Eleanor Merchant died. Constance told me the thing comes and goes. It is not always there.’
‘Any more than Constance is,’ Faunt murmured. ‘What did she mean? The thing has magical properties? It disappears at will? You shouldn’t spend too much time with John Dee, Kit; he’ll turn your mind. Where is this jug now?’
‘I left it with Dr Dee,’ Marlowe said. ‘He locked it away in a cupboard in his rooms. He plans to put it somewhere safe, or so he says. Whether he means to keep it safe from men or to keep men safe from it, I was by no means clear.’
A silence fell between the two as a servant crept into the room and lit the candles. He drew the curtains and waited while another came in carrying a tray of gingerbread and candied fruit. Faunt helped himself once the pair had gone. He waved to Marlowe to join him.
‘The problem is,’ he said, sinking his teeth into a sugar plum, ‘this is not just about Eleanor Merchant, perplexing though her case is.’
‘Not?’ Marlowe paused and pointed to something on the tray. ‘Is that Pine Apple?’
‘Yes,’ Faunt told him. ‘Grown in the Queen’s glass houses at Placentia. I can take it or leave it alone, to be honest, but Sir Francis loves it. Helps his ague, or so he says.’
Marlowe stayed his hand. The last thing he wanted to do was to eat Sir Francis Walsingham’s last slice of Pine Apple.
‘Do take it,’ Faunt said. ‘We have more than we can possibly eat in the kitchens. You were saying?’
‘Not just about Eleanor Merchant? Why not?’
‘At the moment, I’m more interested in John Garrett.’
‘Who?’
‘The Puritan found by Henslowe’s Bear Garden yesterday morning.’
‘Oh, yes. I heard about that. How do you know who he was? Windlass tells me he is unidentified.’
‘Windlass needs to keep his gossip more up to date,’ Faunt said. ‘But, surely, Kit, I don’t need to dignify that with an answer. We are the Queen’s men.’
Marlowe smiled. Indeed they were.
‘The man was mad, of course. I mean, we’re all Protestants here, but he belongs to the Godly, that lunatic fringe. You must have come across them at Cambridge.’
‘A few,’ Marlowe said.
‘Well, it wasn’t just the Rose that Garrett was thrown out of, although that was where he was found the most. He was ejected from the Curtain too and made a thorough nuisance of himself in the stews of Southwark. London is apparently all the cities of the plain rolled into one and theatres … well. He’d have got round to you personally eventually – “the atheist Tamburlaine, the scourge of God”.’ Faunt crossed the room and picked up a pamphlet. ‘Seen this? They found dozens of them near his body. Fell out of his satchel when he was attacked.’
‘How did he die? I heard a knife.’
‘That’s right,’ Faunt said. ‘Through the heart. As clean as a whistle.’
‘Another soul who was a target,’ Marlowe said. ‘He must have made more enemies on both sides of the river than the King of Spain has ships.’
‘Oh, I’m sure he did,’ Faunt said. ‘But it’s the method, you see. Quick. Clean. Almost … scientific.’
‘I don’t follow.’ Marlowe took a sip of Rhenish and grimaced. It didn’t follow candied Pine Apple any too well.
‘If God’s Word Garrett had upset a theatre owner – Henslowe, say. If he’d annoyed a brothel keeper – well, that’s Henslowe again, isn’t it? If he’d started spouting his religious claptrap at St Paul’s Cross – in any of these situations, I’d expect some roughs to work him over. Hell, you can hire half a dozen Apprentices for the cost of that fruit you’re eating. And they’d use clubs. It would be messy, loud and not fatal. They like to leave them alive to encourage the others. No, this was neat. Orderly. And the message here is not “we’ll hurt you”. No it was “you will die”. Just like Eleanor died. Neat and quick.’
‘And I know how that was done,’ Marlowe said. ‘She was killed with a most singular weapon – well, almost singular. It is one of only two in the world. A snaphaunce.’
‘Marlowe!’ Faunt was leaning forward, his supper forgotten. ‘Are you telling me there’s a new kind of gun out there and we don’t know about it?’
‘Apparently so,’ Marlowe said, ‘judging by your reaction. It was smuggled somehow into the Rose on the afternoon in question and fired from the orchestra’s corner. The problem is that one of the two snaphaunces is safe in the Tower under the care of Sir William Waad.’
‘I think we can rule him out, somehow,’ Faunt said.
‘I agree.’ Marlowe nodded. ‘But what about the other one?’
‘Is anything known?’ Faunt asked.
‘Well, Sir William didn’t know any details, but one thing had stuck in his mind because it was so unexpected. He couldn’t work out how the man could have afforded it. It was bought by a tobacconist …’
Faunt was instantly on his feet, crossing the room in a couple of strides. He began rummaging in the pile of papers on a side table, destroying Walsingham’s careful but idiosyncratic filing system in seconds. He found a piece of parchment and slapped it with his open hand. ‘I knew it!’ he shouted. ‘They found a body in the Thames over a week ago. Beyond the Bridge, but it had gone in somewhere upstream. He was unidentified for a while, but now we know he was Simon Bancroft. He was a tobacconist.’
‘Was he now?’
Faunt ran his finger along the line. ‘Inquest verdict … Oh, now, that’s a surprise. Suicide.’
‘Not through money worries, it would seem. Or would it?’ Marlowe tapped his finger on his cheek.
Faunt returned to his chair, topping up Marlowe’s wine. ‘Kit,’ he said, ‘I wouldn’t normally ask it of you …’
‘But could I look into the late Master Bancroft?’ Marlowe smiled. ‘And while I’m at it, get the measure of God’s Word Garrett? All in a day’s work, I suppose.’
‘You’d be doing your friend Shaxsper a favour,’ Faunt said.
Marlowe laughed. ‘Nobody has friends in the theatre, Nicholas, just rivals. You’re only as good as your last caesura.’
‘I’d offer to help,’ Faunt said, ‘but Spain … Well, I can’t say more at the moment. You’ll have the full backing of the Department, of course.’
‘Of course.’ Marlowe smiled. ‘I wouldn’t have it any other way.’
ELEVEN
‘If you could just tell me what you are looking for, sir.’ The old man was wringing his hands in John Garrett’s parlour. It had been the worst week of his life. He thought he had seen it all. They’d whitewashed the walls of his parish church when he was a boy and taught him to read from an English prayer book. Then they’d brought them back, the brass eagles, the wooden saints, the stained glass and priests spoke to him in Latin again – ‘Hocus Pocus’. Now … now he lived with the Godly and the world had turned again. The words of Master Calvin rang in his ears: ‘It is your duty to proclaim the word of God.’ And that is what the ol
d man had done for the last twenty years. ‘I don’t know what you want.’
‘Stow you, ancient.’ Enoch Harrison was in no mood for old idiots this morning. ‘I have the High Constable’s writ. Your master is dead. We need to know why.’
‘It is God’s will, sir,’ the old man said. ‘He cares for the fall of every sparrow. We shouldn’t look more closely than that.’
‘Shouldn’t we?’ Harrison had never stood in the house of one of the Elect before. He’d moved on several of them at street corners and listened to the rubbish they spouted at Paul’s Cross. It was much as he expected though; drab, comfortless, grey and cold. ‘Has this place got a cellar?’ he asked.
The old man nodded.
‘Right. I’ll start down there. Rogers – take the attic.’
Under Constable Rogers didn’t like his job. Unlike Harrison, who relished it, and the High Constable, who did it for a living, Ben Rogers had taken it on for a year as his civic duty. He was a cordwainer really and already he missed his leather and his workbench. If anyone had told him what a full-time job being Under Constable would be, he would never have taken it on. He found the stairs and climbed to the dusty little room under the eaves. The windows were at floor level and the light flooded the floorboards but little else. Under Constable Rogers was a keen observer and he could make out a rectangular shape in the dust of the far corner.
The old man had followed Rogers up the rickety stairs. The dust testified to the fact that he hadn’t been to the top of the house in a long time. His old limbs, twisted by age, couldn’t manage it any more. But this was different. Now the old man’s master was dead – butchered, men said, in a Bear Garden – and there were headboroughs tramping all over his master’s house and him not yet in his grave.
‘What was here?’ Rogers asked him.
The old man had to squint to see what the Under Constable was talking about. ‘Er … a chest, sir,’ he said.
‘What was in it?’
‘I believe Master Garrett kept his Bibles in there, sir, his Scriptures and Notices.’
‘Notices?’
‘Sermons, sir, I suppose you’d call them.’
‘Where’s the chest now?’
