Crimson Rose

by M. J. Trow

  Marlowe clicked his fingers. ‘Let’s call it a Knights’ Templar jug, shall we?’ he said, quietly.

  Bancroft smiled in spite of himself. ‘Master Marlowe, you must make everything a tale, I see. Very well, we go to my friend’s house with this jug and he looks at it carefully, then says he can buy it, will buy it with pleasure, but the price is only forty pounds, perhaps, or thirty or even less if I am greedy. He gives you the money, usually after an argument because it is much less than you need, after all. At a later date, or even that same day, I go to see my friend and give him back his forty, or thirty or whatever the sum was, plus a commission. Looking back through this book, it looks like ten per cent. I also retrieve my jug, or whatever the item in question may be. Do you see?’

  ‘But …’ Marlowe was working it out, and failing. ‘You are down twenty-two pounds … aren’t you?’

  ‘In the short term. But I have your promissory note for far more. And if you don’t pay me I can do one of two things. I can sell the note for a little less than its face value to someone less scrupulous than myself, who will use strong-arm tactics to get the money. Or I take you to court and take, if necessary, all you have.’

  A light went on behind Marlowe’s eyes. ‘I see! So you have charged me interest of—’

  Bancroft broke in. ‘Anything up to fifty per cent for as little as a week or a month. Taken over the year, that is thousands of percent. Totally illegal, of course, but effective and in use every day, somewhere in London and doubtless everywhere men need to borrow money.’

  Marlowe was so busy tying up loose ends, he could hardly form the words to take his leave of Bancroft, but, taking the book, he half ran, half fell down the stairs. He needed to talk this through with someone who would understand it, before he forgot how it worked. He would have to find Nicholas Faunt.

  THIRTEEN

  If Nicholas Faunt had an address, Marlowe didn’t know it. He was one of those men who was just suddenly there, sitting in a Cambridge inn or dancing, masked, at a country house. He could be the man praying beside you in church, riding through a tangled wood with his hawk as you hunted. And he could be the man on the other end of a knife that was sticking in your ribs.

  But one thing was certain; Nicholas Faunt was never far from Francis Walsingham. Marlowe had found him last at Barn Elms because Faunt had sent for him. What was it Faunt had said? ‘You’ll have the full backing of the Department, of course.’ Well, Marlowe would put that to the test. Walsingham was the Department. He could be at Placentia or Nonsuch or Whitehall or Hampton Court, wherever the Queen commanded ‘her moor’ to attend her. On the other hand, he could be at his house at Seething Lane, hard by the Tower.

  The end of March was not kind to Francis Walsingham. His old trouble came back with the crisis over the Queen of Scots and now the Spanish business, and his stomach felt as though he was permanently locked into Skeffington’s Gyves, his nose touching his knees.

  He looked straight enough to Nicholas Faunt that day, but Faunt had always believed that Walsingham would live forever and minor ailments he could overlook.

  ‘Any news of twenty-two?’ He took Walsingham’s proffered glass, checking the Burgundy for its clarity and any traces of sediment. He trusted Walsingham with his life, except when it came to accepting a drink from the man. The Spymaster looked up at him from his crabbed position behind the huge desk, the eyes heavy, the black beard flecked with grey.

  ‘You don’t have to use code here, Nicholas,’ the man said quietly. ‘I have personally had removed the ears these walls once owned. We are alone.’

  After the tranquillity of Barn Elms, where the river lapped and the curlews called, Seething Lane was chaotic. In the hall and passageways below, clerks of every hue bustled backwards and forwards, whatever the hour, laden with maps, documents, ciphers, letters, assiduously oiling the cogs that kept the machinery of government turning. Even so, Walsingham was right. Up here, under the heavy eaves, there was a reassuring stillness. Out of the window, through which the last light of evening crept, the Tower stood square and imposing. Whoever wanted to get to the Queen’s Spymaster would have to get past the Queen’s arsenal first.

  ‘Very well.’ Faunt sipped his wine. ‘What news of Francis Drake?’

  ‘When Drake has accomplished something,’ Walsingham sighed, leaning back against his chair, ‘I am sure I will be the last to know. He’s promised to, as he puts it, singe the King of Spain’s beard.’

  ‘Has he, by God?’ Faunt laughed.

  ‘If he does,’ the old Puritan said with a solemn face, ‘it will be by God, yes.’

  Faunt shifted a little. He was less than happy when Walsingham came over all religious. Such men were dangerous. ‘I actually came to talk to you,’ he said, ‘about Blackfriars.’

  ‘The safe house in Water Lane?’ Walsingham dipped his quill back into the inkwell.

  ‘Safe no longer, I fear,’ Faunt said. ‘It’s been compromised. We’ll have to move on.’

  Walsingham nodded. ‘Any ideas?’

  ‘I wondered about Marlowe’s place,’ Faunt suggested. ‘Hog Lane. Norton Folgate. It’s in the Liberties, rather less busy, shall we say, than Blackfriars.’

  The Spymaster knew that Faunt had a point. ‘What will Marlowe think of it?’ he asked.

  ‘Marlowe might not mind,’ a voice said behind them. ‘But you should know that the house in Hog Lane is simply lousy with mice.’ The two men turned to look at their visitor. Walsingham was out of his seat. Faunt had a dagger in his hand. ‘Sir Francis, Master Faunt,’ Marlowe said, sketching a bow. ‘I am pleased to have found you so quickly. I thought I might have had to scour London and beyond.’

  ‘How did you get in?’ Walsingham wanted to know. ‘It’s not possible.’

  ‘Isn’t that why you employ me?’ Marlowe asked. ‘To do the impossible?’

  ‘It’s not like you to be looking for us, Master Marlowe,’ Walsingham said with a small smile, acknowledging a point well made. ‘The boot is usually very much on the other foot.’

  ‘I need to speak to Master Faunt,’ Marlowe said, watching the man slip his dagger away with the same ease with which he had drawn it. ‘If you will excuse me, Sir Francis. It is in connection with something we have spoken of before.’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ Walsingham said, with an impatient wave of his hand. ‘The death of Eleanor Merchant. We were discussing that when you arrived.’

  Faunt shot him a look, but needn’t have worried. Walsingham was too wily a fox to let anything out of the bag before its time.

  ‘Her death, yes, of course,’ Marlowe said, perching on a hard chair between the two men, but leaning forward as though anxious to be away. ‘But also of two others – two others we know of, that is – and the link between them.’

  ‘Explain.’ Walsingham never used three words where one would do as well.

  Marlowe explained all he and Faunt knew to the Spymaster, saving the best until the last. ‘But now,’ he said, ferreting in his purse for the tiny ledger, ‘we also have this.’ He flourished it and handed it to Faunt, as the one with the better eyesight. Even he had to take it over to a candle on the table and turn it to the light.

  ‘It’s a ledger,’ he said. He turned it in his hand. ‘A very small ledger. So what is your point, Kit?’

  Marlowe was about to reply when Walsingham held out his hand. ‘Don’t spoil the game, Master Marlowe,’ he said. ‘Let me see if I can work it out.’ He took the book from Faunt and weighed it thoughtfully in his hand. He stroked the soft leather covers and flicked the pages, then smelled the open book. He too turned to the candlelight and ran his finger down a line of figures. ‘Is this the best you can do to test the old man?’ he asked. ‘I haven’t seen one of these for a long time. In fact, not many people choose to keep a ledger of such dealings. Whoever wrote these figures is dabbling –’ he looked at the totals – ‘I should say more than dabbling, perhaps, in double stoccado.’

  Marlowe visibly wilted.

&nb
sp; ‘Well,’ the older man said, throwing the book back to the playwright, ‘am I right?’ He looked closely into Marlowe’s eyes. He slapped his knee. ‘I am right. I haven’t lost the touch, eh, Nicholas? So, who is this blackguard? Mind you.’ He flicked through the pages. ‘He only seems to be keeping around ten per cent and on very small amounts. Not much harm done there, I don’t think. The sums loaned are paid back quickly –’ again, the flick through the pages – ‘very quickly, looking at these dates.’ He frowned at Marlowe. ‘Explain.’

  ‘I have only just had this double stoccado explained to me,’ Marlowe said, ‘and as I walked here, I thought it through. Thaddeus Bancroft seemed quite sure that his cousin was not an out and out rogue and I agree that as far as a moneylender goes, he seems to get his money back very quickly. The same day, as Sir Francis has noticed, very often.’ Faunt seemed about to speak, but Marlowe forestalled him. ‘You can tell by the dates on the bottom of one page and the top of another, Nicholas. The summing works too well for there to have been a gap – there would have been sums carried over, that kind of thing. I think, anyway.’ He raised an eyebrow at Walsingham, who nodded. ‘So I think that Simon Bancroft was the second person, the “friend”, to whom the borrower is taken. He may not have known how much money was being made by the principal.’

  Faunt had picked up the book again and was looking through it, page by page, holding each one up to the light. Finally, on the last but one, he breathed a triumphant, ‘Ah ha.’

  ‘What have you found there, Nicholas?’ the old Spymaster asked.

  ‘Here, on this page, pricked with a pin. Hold a minute, it is not well done …’

  Walsingham turned to Marlowe with an indulgent smile. ‘Nicholas is master of the pricked message. Anything less than perfection irks him.’

  ‘This is not … no, I have it. “H. Crutched Friars”. That’s all.’

  ‘That could be the moneylender, do you think?’

  ‘The Crutched Friars,’ said Walsingham. ‘Just around the corner. It is the kind of address where a moneylender might live, I suppose … but why are we worrying ourselves over this? Why would a moneylender be killing – I think this is what you are saying, Kit – killing the people who help him? Did they steal from him, perhaps? Did they try to keep the valuable goods that they were “buying” each time? Surely not. They would know that they couldn’t get away with that. And, besides, if these initials denote the item …?’ Marlowe nodded. ‘Then it is clearly used over and over again.’

  ‘Is someone else killing them?’ Marlowe suggested. ‘Because they want to be part of the scheme and are not chosen, because … No, that won’t work. If that was all, then why kill three?’

  ‘Blackmail!’ Faunt said, clicking his fingers.

  ‘My boy,’ Walsingham said indulgently, ‘you are working too hard. Blackmailers don’t kill their victims.’

  ‘No,’ Marlowe said to Walsingham, ‘but victims kill their blackmailers. If the moneylender was being blackmailed, he would assume it would be someone who knew all about his business. And who better but one of his partners, if we can call them that?’

  ‘Precisely so,’ Faunt said. ‘But he didn’t know which one it was, so he is killing them one by one, until the blackmail stops.’

  ‘In that case,’ Walsingham said, rather cold-heartedly, ‘why are we using precious breath by discussing it? A moneylender, his cronies and a blackmailer. Let them bludgeon and shoot each other until they are all extinct. The air of London will be the sweeter for it, surely?’

  ‘That is certainly one way of looking at it,’ Marlowe said. ‘But so far a woman is widowed, three children are orphaned and …’ He was a little stuck for a sob-story on the Puritan, so let the sentence hang. ‘While this man is killing his partners, he is killing people guilty of nothing more than trying to make some money on the side and who can argue with that? Simon Bancroft wanted his wife to have a comfortable life. Eleanor Merchant was trying to get back the money squandered by her husband. Even God’s Word Garrett was trying to do good, to set up a new life for the Godly away from England. Why should they die?’

  Faunt and Marlowe were looking at each other with glittering eyes. The game was afoot and they were eager for the chase. Walsingham looked at them as they sat there, hardly able to keep still. ‘You remind me of greyhounds in the slips,’ he said at last, rising painfully from his chair. ‘I am for my bed. I have boxes of papers to read before I sleep, so I’ll say good night.’ He smiled at the two and made for the door. ‘I think that if I know nothing of your plans I will sleep the better for it. Wait until I am down the stairs; my hearing is excellent.’

  The two men waited, listening for the old man’s footsteps to die away. Faunt relaxed back in his chair and extended a hand. ‘You first, Kit,’ he said.

  Seething Lane was as quiet as it ever got, with just a flickering candle in Walsingham’s bedroom on the first floor. The old house was shifting as it cooled, clerks bedding down under their desks, the kitchen range clicking as the embers died one by one. Two men, cloaked in black, oozed out of a door tucked round the side of the building and pressed themselves into the shadow of the wall.

  ‘Ready, Kit?’ breathed Faunt. He was excited – as only a man of action lately tied to paperwork and plotting could be – at last, to be doing something active. There would be blood; and if he wasn’t exactly hoping for it, if the prophecy came true, he wouldn’t be sorry.

  ‘Ready.’ Like Faunt, Marlowe could feel his heart beating just that bit faster and his brain was fizzing. A play with your name on it was all very fine and well, but there was nothing quite like the thrill of the chase. ‘Crutched Friars; I don’t know it well. Are there many houses in it? How will we find the one we want?’

  Faunt raised a shoulder. Who knew? That was what working in the field was all about, after all. They trod on silent shoes until they reached the corner and creeping round it found they were suddenly not alone. A bellman stood there, raising his dark lantern to shine into their faces. He knew a couple of felons when he saw them, although quite what he could do against two strong young men, and one armed to the teeth at that, he wasn’t so sure. But still, the City paid him to keep watch, and so keep watch he would.

  ‘May I help you gentlemen?’ he said, in as brave a voice as he could manage. He estimated that their cumulative ages came nowhere near his own.

  ‘Hush.’ Faunt’s admonishment came out as almost a breath.

  The bellman had many admirable qualities, but sharp hearing was not among them; ringing a bell next to his ear for ten years straight had not helped the situation. ‘Eh?’ he said loudly, inclining his head.

  Marlowe leaned in and whispered as loudly as he could. ‘Pray, be quiet. We are trying to take someone by surprise.’

  ‘Party, is it?’ the bellman said. Now he looked more closely, they were more roisterer than felon.

  Faunt sighed and reached into his doublet and showed the man the Queen’s badge. He took him by the sleeve and pulled him back round the corner. Tilting the man’s lantern so it shone on his own lips, Faunt enunciated clearly, but quietly. ‘We need to be quiet. We need to find a house in the Crutched Friars. Do you understand? Just nod.’

  The man nodded. This was better; if only people always spoke this clearly.

  ‘Your lantern will be helpful. May we borrow it?’

  No nodding this time. ‘Oh, no,’ the bellman said. ‘We have to buy our lanterns with our own money. You’re not taking that.’

  Marlowe moved the lantern over and continued the conversation. He sensed that Faunt had a very low threshold when it came to dealing with the stupid elderly deaf. ‘If you come with us, you must be quiet. Whatever you see us do, you mustn’t try to intervene. Can you do that? If not, then I’m afraid that my friend here will have to take your lantern by force.’ Without prompting, Faunt had unsheathed his dagger and held it under the light. ‘So, may we have your lantern?’ Against his better judgement, the old man shook his head. ‘So, you’
ll come with us, but be quiet.’ There was a pause, then a reluctant nod. ‘Well then, off we go.’

  ‘It will be time soon for me to ring my bell and tell everyone all is well.’ The man was stupid, perhaps, but very conscientious; a dangerous combination in these circumstances. ‘All is well, isn’t it?’

  Faunt pulled his face close to his own and spoke in a normal tone. ‘Yes and no,’ he said, ‘but if you do, that bell is going down your throat. Do you understand?’ As well as he could with Faunt’s hand on his collar, the bellman nodded. ‘Well, then, let’s try again.’

  In single file, with Marlowe at their head and Faunt bringing up the rear, they crept round into Crutched Friars, the rabbit warren of hovels where the monastery used to stand in the days of King Harry. Marlowe’s heart fell. The houses had been built over the years, piecemeal and at random. Some were almost derelict with neglect, others spick and span, but there was nothing to denote where ‘H’ might live. He looked round and caught sight of Faunt’s expression. He was obviously thinking the same.

  Holding the bellman’s sleeve to show that they were going to be stationary for a moment, Marlowe went close to Faunt and whispered in his ear. ‘Which house?’

  ‘I have no idea. There must be a mark of some kind. Let’s see if there is anything that might guide us.’

  Marlowe prised the lantern from the bellman’s grip and, holding it aloft, they slowly started on their examination of the doors along the riverwards side of the street. Faunt, an expert in discovering the undiscoverable, ran his fingers along the mullions of the windows, feeling the stone or wood for incised signs. They found nothing, but crossed to start again in the other direction. Neither wanted to believe they could fail this early in the enterprise. But all along the northern side, there wasn’t a sign of an ‘H’ on any door or window.

  Pulling the bellman with them, they huddled together round the corner. ‘Now what?’ Faunt asked. ‘Look again?’