Crimson Rose

by M. J. Trow

  The playwright frowned up at the door. ‘But this is where we came to ask for you,’ he said. ‘The address in Bancroft’s book. The ermine sign.’

  ‘Or,’ Faunt felt it fair to point out, ‘a very badly drawn H, for Harrison.’

  Thynne asked again. ‘Do you want me to knock?’

  Marlowe nodded and Thynne beat out a rapid and complex tattoo on the door. Marlowe and Faunt stepped aside; there was no point in presenting a target to whoever was inside.

  Harrison’s giant factotum Peach stood there, almost filling the tiny hallway, his fists bunched in readiness.

  ‘Peach,’ Thynne said, the tone of insolent command back in his voice. ‘Where’s Harrison?’

  A door to his left opened and Harrison stood just inside the room, firelight behind him and a candle burning in a sconce on the wall. ‘Master Thynne? What is all this?’ Marlowe and Faunt burst through the still open door and slammed it shut.

  Thynne pointed with a hysterical, trembling finger. ‘There he is!’ he told them. ‘There’s your murderer!’

  Harrison’s face turned to a thundercloud. ‘What!’ he roared. ‘You dare say that about me, you conniving, lying dog? Peach! Kill him.’

  Peach did not have lightning reflexes. He was good at taking orders, but making decisions was not one of his talents. He moved from one foot to the other, but that was all.

  ‘Peach!’ Thynne joined the confusion. ‘Don’t listen to him. You know he killed those people. Grab him. Give him in charge to these gentlemen. They know what to do with murdering pigs like him.’

  Harrison stepped away from the doorway and revealed his right hand for the first time. In it, he had a deadly knife, which he held in front of him as he walked slowly forward, towards Thynne. ‘What have you been saying about me, you welching, greedy bastard?’ he said through gritted teeth. Not taking his eyes off Thynne, he spoke to Marlowe and Faunt. ‘While he was lording it over all of us, telling us to run here, run there, do this, do that, he was worse than any felon we took in charge. He was making interest on loans that would make your eyes water, taking money for protection – protection from his own men, I might tell you. He was dealing in stolen goods, he was—’

  ‘Shut up!’ Thynne screamed in his face. ‘That was all you. It’s over, can’t you see that?’

  Marlowe stepped forward. ‘This isn’t getting anyone anywhere,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t take a genius to see that Master Faunt and I are outnumbered, assuming you thieves stick together. Sir William Danby, the Queen’s Coroner, knows where we are and who with. And if I tell you that Master Faunt here is Sir Francis Walsingham’s man, you know that if you so much as harm a hair on his head, your heads will be on the Bridge before cock-shut time tomorrow. So, less screaming from both of you. Let’s settle this like gentlemen, shall we?’

  Harrison took a reluctant step back, but kept his knife raised. Peach managed to reposition himself so as to be completely detached from the constables, High or otherwise, no mean feat in the tiny space.

  ‘Now,’ Marlowe said. ‘Let’s start with Master Simon Bancroft, shall we?’

  ‘Who?’ Harrison asked.

  ‘Very clever,’ hissed Thynne. ‘You know perfectly well who he is, since you killed him.’

  ‘The tobacconist,’ Marlowe said, calmly. ‘Found in the river.’

  Harrison shrugged his shoulders. A voice which sounded as though it came from the inside of a mountain sounded behind Marlowe. ‘That was Frizer and Skeres,’ Peach said. ‘I gave them the money and the name. It was writ on a piece of parchment, wrapped round the gold. It was sealed with his seal.’ He pointed to Thynne.

  ‘Well, that’s not evidence, is it?’ Thynne said. ‘My seal is on my desk. Anyone could use it.’ He pointed to Harrison. ‘He uses it all the time.’

  Peach had more. ‘And that Puritan bloke. They done for him and all. Same thing. Parchment, gold, seal.’ He mimed the parcel with hands like trussed geese.

  ‘Same thing indeed,’ Thynne said. ‘Peach, you have the brain of a slug.’

  Harrison was not denying the accusations any longer. He stood with the knife held out, but with the other hand on his hip, as though listening to an interesting story – fiction, but interesting.

  ‘What about Eleanor Merchant?’ Marlowe asked Peach.

  ‘Dunno. Somebody else might’ve give them the parcel. I ain’t always here.’

  ‘No,’ Marlowe said. ‘I don’t think it was Frizer and Skeres who did that one. It was a little fancy for them.’

  ‘Do you know these people?’ Faunt asked.

  ‘In a manner of speaking,’ Marlowe said. ‘I don’t think they had the brains to carry out the murder of Eleanor Merchant. That was … well, one of these two gentlemen, I suppose we should say.’

  ‘Him,’ Thynne and Harrison said, as well as any Chorus.

  ‘I know Constable Harrison was at the play when that woman died,’ Peach said. ‘He likes a play, Enoch does.’

  ‘I don’t deny it,’ Harrison said. ‘But I was in with the other groundlings because certain people don’t give me enough money to pay for the gallery. How could I shoot her from there? I know the crowd can get a bit raucous at times, but not so they wouldn’t notice me or anyone else turn a gun on someone.’

  ‘Can you prove you were with the groundlings?’ Marlowe said.

  ‘Er …’ Harrison gave it some thought. ‘I was standing near that woman that shouted “That’s the stuff” or something. They threw her out.’

  ‘That’s not much of an answer,’ Marlowe said. ‘Someone always shouts out something like that. Try again.’

  ‘I’m thinking,’ Harrison said and he really seemed to be working at pummelling his brain into action.

  ‘He can’t prove a thing,’ Thynne shouted, triumphantly. ‘Because he did it!’

  ‘I remember!’ Harrison said. ‘Some woman shouted “Yes, indeed” during … the Prologue, was it? It was after that useless shawm player buggered up the fanfare.’

  ‘He inhaled a fly,’ Thynne said, then stopped abruptly, eyes swivelling from man to man. ‘That’s what I heard, anyway. When I questioned the orchestra after the murder.’

  ‘He inhaled a fly?’ Marlowe asked, quietly. ‘Even I didn’t know that until the other day. Tell me, Master Thynne, are you musical at all?’

  ‘Ha!’ Thynne said. ‘I can’t carry a tune in a bucket, everyone says so.’

  Peach gave his preparatory rumble again. ‘That ain’t true, Master Thynne,’ he said. ‘You’ve got a nice singing voice and you played that whatsit, that thing what that woman brought in the other day, you played it to make sure it worked. Lovely, it was.’ He nodded at Faunt and Marlowe. ‘Just a snatch, like, but really nice.’ He hummed a bar.

  ‘So,’ Marlowe mused, not taking his eyes off Thynne. ‘We have a conundrum, Nicholas. Is our murderer Enoch Harrison, he whose name begins with an “H”?’ He crossed slowly to the High Constable. ‘Or is it a man who is still a member of the Worshipful Company of Skinners whose badge is an ermine?’ He flicked aside Thynne’s cloak to reveal the embroidered badge glinting in the half light.

  Things seemed to happen as though everyone was embalmed in liquid amber. Harrison took a step forward at the speed of a glacier, lunging with elephantine slowness at Thynne. Suddenly the High Constable sped up to the normal tick of the universe, turned and was gone out of the door to the street, batting Marlowe aside.

  ‘Get after him, Kit. You’re faster than I am,’ Faunt said and Marlowe hurtled into the night.

  ‘Now, Master … Peach, is it? It was a little careless of Master Marlowe to let slip that I am Sir Francis Walsingham’s man, but in essence he is right. That rope there –’ he pointed to it coiled on the floor – ‘would you like to see it around your neck or Constable Harrison’s wrists?’

  It was wonderful what a choice like that did for a man like Peach. Harrison was flat on his face in a heartbeat and a very large ex-employee was lashing his hands together.

&nbs
p; FOURTEEN

  Thynne was a will o’ the wisp as they chased him through sleeping St Dunstan’s. What moon there was hid behind clouds and ducked below the angled gables of the tall houses. Faunt had caught up with Marlowe and they had to be careful. It was the experience of both of them that the only sleeping people in London were the honest souls who had finished their day’s work, said their prayers and gone to bed. Everybody else was still on the streets, the footpads lurking around every corner, loitering in every square.

  ‘He’s going south,’ Faunt said, finding it difficult to keep pace with the younger man with his longer strides.

  ‘The river,’ agreed Marlowe. ‘Then what?’

  ‘One thing we can be sure of,’ Faunt wheezed. ‘The High Constable is not the sort to take his own life in a fit of remorse and shoot the Bridge.’

  ‘He’s not going for the Bridge.’ Marlowe saw their quarry’s cloak flying as his boots clattered into Petty Wales. ‘He’s going for the Wool Wharf. For a boat.’

  ‘He’ll be lucky,’ Faunt grunted. ‘At this time of night.’

  ‘He’s the High Constable of London, Nicholas. He’ll just flash his badge and he’ll have a whole fleet of ferrymen at his disposal.’

  ‘Shit!’ Faunt caught his foot on an uneven cobblestone and checked himself against a wall. ‘We need some light.’

  ‘Ho, bellman!’ Marlowe saw a glimmer floating past the empty wool stalls yards away and prayed that its carrier wasn’t as stupid as the man they’d left at the Crutched Friars. He left Faunt to hobble on as best he could and dashed across the open space where the Carthusians had once knelt in prayer. ‘Your lantern if you please.’ It hadn’t worked last time and it didn’t work now.

  ‘I cannot, sir,’ the man said, standing as tall as he could and holding his horn lantern aloft to see Marlowe’s face. ‘Not even for Christopher Marlowe.’

  ‘You know me?’ Marlowe was amazed.

  ‘The author of Tamburlaine?’ the bellman said. ‘I most certainly do. Me and the missus have seen it three times now. The missus, well, she goes to watch that Ned Alleyn. Me, I go for the poetry of it all. Brilliant.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Marlowe said, momentarily thrown by this surreal conversation. ‘Then you’ll let me have the lantern?’

  ‘Oh, I couldn’t do that, sir.’ The bellman shook his head solemnly. ‘It’s more than my job’s worth.’

  ‘You heard about the shooting at the theatre?’

  ‘Heard about it?’ the bellman said. ‘I was there. Me and the missus. Shocking.’

  ‘Well, what if I told you we’re after the bastard who did it?’

  ‘You are?’ The bellman looked across to where Nicholas Faunt was sitting on the ground, nursing a twisted ankle.

  ‘Yes.’ Marlowe felt he had to underline it. ‘So, can I have the lantern?’

  ‘No, sir.’ The bellman was still on his dignity. ‘But you can have me and the lantern.’

  Marlowe looked at the man. He was older than Faunt, older than Methuselah perhaps, but he looked solid enough and he carried a staff. He didn’t seem to be deaf. Most importantly of all, he carried a lantern. ‘Fair enough,’ he said and slapped his arm before dashing back to Faunt.

  ‘Leave me, Kit,’ the man said. ‘I’ll only slow you up. Get after him, man. You’ll lose him. Here, you might need this.’ And he threw him his glittering badge of office.

  Marlowe and the bellman clattered away.

  Twice, before they reached the Wool Wharf, Marlowe thought that Faunt was right – he had lost him. But each time he caught sight of a running man. The bellman’s lungs felt like bursting but he matched Marlowe stride for stride – as long as he didn’t need to speak as well – the lantern, its shutters full open, throwing lurid shafts of light off the cranes and the bales of wool.

  Far out across the river a solitary light bobbed on the ebb tide. Marlowe took a gamble. Where was Thynne going? If he’d gone downstream, he could have been making for Deptford, to take a ship bound for anywhere in the wide world. But for that he would need the wind and the tide and a captain accommodating enough to take on board a man breathing hard as if Hell followed him. If Thynne turned upstream he’d meet the Bridge and that was impassable for any wherry no matter how determined. No, the man was making for Southwark and the rolling Surrey countryside beyond it. There’d be time enough to lose himself in the forests of the Weald or find the coast anywhere he liked. After that, no power on earth could get him back.

  Marlowe dashed out on to the jetty. ‘Ho, waterman!’ he shouted. Two or three men asleep in their boats under blankets and canvas lifted tired heads. ‘Southwark!’ Marlowe commanded.

  ‘Look, sirrah,’ the nearest waterman said, ‘it’s nearly two of the clock. You won’t get in to the Punk Alice now and anything still wandering the streets, believe me, you don’t want to know.’

  ‘Do you know this, sirrah?’ Marlowe dropped to one knee on the planks and all but pushed the Semper Eadem up the man’s nose. ‘The badge of the Queen?’

  ‘Er … yessir.’ The waterman was suddenly the most loyal subject in the realm. He threw off his blankets and lit his lantern, steadying the boat as Marlowe clambered aboard.

  ‘Thanks, bellman,’ he said. ‘Next time you and the missus come to see Tamburlaine, be sure to let them know you’re a friend of Kit Marlowe. I’ll make sure you get two of the best seats, on the house.’

  ‘That’s gratifying, sir,’ the bellman said. ‘But I offered my services to help you catch that bastard. Besides, it’s a dodgy place, south of the river. You don’t want to be there after dark.’

  Kit Marlowe had lost count of the times he’d been south of the river after dark, but he smiled and turned his face to the wind as the waterman took up his oars. ‘Southward ho!’ he called to the lonely night.

  They saw Thynne’s boat reach the Southwark mud and a dark, cloaked figure jump ashore. The man was going west, towards the bulk of St Olave’s, its spire black against the purple of the night. Marlowe was out of his boat first, sinking up to his calves in the clawing ground and wading up to the road. The bellman was half a step behind him as they leapt the graves around the church. The dead of Southwark watched them go, past all caring who trampled over them now.

  And now Marlowe knew exactly where Thynne was going. He couldn’t have planned for this, to have all his complex plans unravelled like a sleeve in the still watches of the night. He would need money, wherever he planned to run to out of London; that would be vital. And Thynne knew just where to find it – the little room at the top of the Rose where Philip Henslowe slept most nights with his broken clay pots and his coffer full of silver. If Henslowe wasn’t there, there would be nothing to stop Thynne. A man like him knew his way round locks; he would just smash his way in. If Henslowe was there, the High Constable would add another to his list of people who made the regrettable mistake of getting in his way. And Philip Henslowe was no match for Hugh Thynne.

  The Rose loomed out of the darkness, the bare flagpole standing tall above the roof where Henslowe planned to build his tower with the proceeds of Tamburlaine. There was a shrill cackle in the shadows of Rose Alley. A Winchester goose was fumbling with a man, stuffing her breasts away at the arrival of the men from north of the river. Marlowe half turned, but he was too slow and he saw the lantern sprawl across the road, dropped from the bellman’s grasp. The man sank to his knees, felled by a blow from Thynne’s lead-headed cane, and he lay groaning in the mud.

  Marlowe was suddenly alone. The fumbling couple had gone. The bellman was sleeping soundly. And for the first time, Marlowe realized he was unarmed. In a way, that made sense. A man running with a rapier through the London night was likely to hit every obstacle in sight as well as trip himself up at the first difficult turn. But now … Thynne emerged from the shadow of the Rose’s entrance way, the cane held out in front of him. With dazzling speed, he swept off the Malacca and a long blade glinted wickedly in the half light. There was no need for Marlowe to feel fo
r the sheathed dagger at his back. He had had no time to replace the one Frizer and Skeres had borrowed. Why hadn’t Faunt thrown him something more useful than …? He gripped the badge and threw it at Thynne, who saw it coming and batted it aside with his blade. Marlowe rolled to his right and snatched up the bellman’s staff as he scrabbled upright again.

  He heard Thynne chuckle. ‘What are you going to do with that stick, playwright?’ he asked.

  Marlowe decided to show him and, twirling the thing in both hands, smashed it again and again on Thynne’s blade, driving him back to the Rose’s wall. Thynne cursed and lunged, the steel slicing through Marlowe’s left sleeve and Marlowe’s left arm. Now Marlowe was against the wall and he paused for breath.

  ‘One thing I need to know,’ he said, feeling the blood trickle under his shirt.

  ‘You don’t need to know anything where you’re going,’ Thynne said, the point of his sword circling in the Southwark night.

  ‘Indulge me,’ Marlowe hissed and swung the staff again. Thynne caught it on his blade and batted it aside but Marlowe was faster and shoulder-barged the man, who staggered back, temporarily winded. In a split second, the blade-tip was there again, probing for Marlowe’s chest.

  ‘Eleanor Merchant,’ Marlowe said. ‘I know you hired those two coney-catchers to kill Bancroft and Garrett. Why the switch for Eleanor?’

  ‘Would you believe,’ Thynne smiled, ‘honour among thieves? Yes. I’ll never understand it either. All my years hunting evil. They still surprise me, the gallows-fodder. Skeres and Frizer drew the line, they said, at killing a woman. I could line up as many men for them to knock down as I liked, but a woman … no. I told them she was blackmailing me, but they still refused.’

  ‘Was she blackmailing you?’ It made no difference, but Marlowe wanted to know anyway.

  ‘Somebody was. I thought it was her. First I thought it was Bancroft, of course. He was just too … pleasant to my face. He gave me a gun – priceless, it was. But you know that. It’s in pieces now, at the bottom of the river. Now destroying it, that was a crime. But when he was dead, well, the blackmail went on. So I killed Eleanor Merchant, then had Garrett killed. And still the blackmail went on, but now, there was more to blackmail me about. And all the time, it was Harrison. I realized that tonight. God’s teeth, I was stupid! Why couldn’t I see what was in front of my face?’