A Prisoner in Malta

by Phillip DePoy

  “You have not fully considered the consequences of your decision here tonight,” Lopez said, his voice almost desperate. “You can still say no.”

  “If you love England, you can scarcely say no,” Walsingham objected, glaring at Lopez. “If you cannot rescue our spy, we may well be lost; very likely find ourselves in a Catholic nation with a Scots Queen on the throne. And, make no mistake, Mary is a woman utterly controlled by Spain. England, the England that we love, would cease to exist were she queen.”

  For an instant there was no sound in the room, as if hearts and lungs had ceased their labors, and the air itself refused to move.

  Then Marlowe smiled and stood.

  “When do I leave?”

  Walsingham surrendered to the merest show of relief before nodding curtly. “Immediately.”

  Without hesitation, Marlowe turned to go, seized by a sudden thrill of excitement.

  “Ah,” Walsingham sighed, examining several notes on his desk, “one thing more, alas.”

  Marlowe turned, but not completely.

  “Are you aware of someone called Walter Pygott?” Walsingham asked softly.

  “Pygott?” Marlowe turned fully to face Walsingham. “Of course. He’s a student at Cambridge. Odd that you should mention him. He and I had an amusing encounter.”

  “Yes.” Walsingham’s face was ice. “He’s dead. Murdered.”

  “Dead?” Marlowe looked at Lopez. “No. He was alive this afternoon.”

  “My messenger’s horse was much faster than your coach,” Walsingham explained. “You are named. There is a warrant for your arrest.”

  “A warrant for me?” Marlowe’s head twitched a bit. “But that’s ridiculous.”

  “His body, the body of this Pygott, was found in your rooms at Cambridge. Stabbed dozens of times, with a dagger very much like the one you are wearing now. Did you kill him?”

  “Of course not.” Marlowe glanced at Lopez. “I did roust him a bit, but the doctor was there. He saw the whole thing. Pygott was alive and well when we left. He stumbled off, and then Dr. Lopez got me into the coach that brought us here. The doctor is my complete defense against this bizarre allegation.”

  Walsingham turned his gaze to Dr. Lopez.

  “It’s true,” Lopez said calmly. “Marlowe could not possibly have murdered the boy. I will attest to that in any inquiry.”

  “There we have it, then,” Walsingham said, looking down. “I am certain you have nothing to worry about. The Cambridge constabulary is nearly nonexistent and of no consequence, of course, but you must sort it out as soon as you return from Malta. For now, be on your way with all haste. I believe, Dr. Lopez, that you know a Portuguese captain by the name of de Ferro.”

  Lopez nodded slowly.

  “He will provide your swift passage.” Walsingham stood. “Time is of the absolute essence.”

  With that, the door to the room opened, several men appeared, and, without a word, escorted Marlowe and Lopez out of Walsingham’s chamber and back into the coach.

  “Seems I won’t be seeing Penelope after all,” Marlowe lamented as the coach took off. “Alas.”

  * * *

  The door closed. Walsingham remained standing.

  From behind him, a woman’s voice, deep with strain, asked a single question.

  “Will it work?”

  “This is only one of several plans, Your Majesty,” Walsingham said without turning around.

  “But will it work?”

  “I’ve had an eye on Marlowe for some time now.”

  “Yes, we know,” the Queen said from the shadows.

  “He could prove a formidable agent.”

  “Or a spectacular disaster.”

  “Quite right,” Walsingham agreed. “But the damnable Jew swears to the boy’s abilities.”

  Her Majesty took a single step into the flickering candlelight.

  “Have a care how you speak of our royal physician,” she said without emotion. “He has saved our life, as you well know.”

  “He’ll be your first physician if he comes back, Majesty. The greater concern is for the young poet.”

  “Wanted for murder,” the Queen mused. “Do we know who killed the Pygott boy?”

  “We do not,” Walsingham confessed, “but his death serves our purpose. The father, Robert Pygott, is one of Throckmorton’s conspirators. He’ll come after Marlowe, and Marlowe will expose him.”

  “Or he’ll kill Marlowe. You’re using Marlowe as bait.”

  “Yes, Majesty.” Walsingham sighed. “But as I say, he’s very capable. And it might be useful to know who killed the younger Pygott.”

  “Have you read any of Marlowe’s pages? He’s one of Kyd’s protégés.”

  “Is that all there is to the relationship?” Walsingham said, gathering up the papers from the desk in front of him.

  “Are you suspicious of everyone?” she asked.

  “Yes,” Walsingham answered, and there was no hiding the weariness in his response.

  “When will they return, my doctor and your newest agent?”

  “If they return, Majesty, it will be within the month.”

  The Queen’s voice softened. “I know you are concerned, Francis.”

  “Yes. God.” Walsingham’s face, at last, betrayed his deepest anxieties, though they remained unspoken.

  “They will return—all three.” And without another word, the Queen was gone.

  “I wish I had the same confidence,” Walsingham said to himself, blowing out the candle.

  FOUR

  AT SEA

  Just after dawn that morning, an unnamed Portuguese ship slid almost silently out of its dock in Hastings, bound for the Channel Islands and beyond. The ship was a spectacular carrack. It was large enough to be stable in the heaviest sea, and the hold was unexpectedly capacious. Its high, rounded stern sported a larger-than-usual aftcastle, and the spar protruding from the prow was unusually long. Ships like it had sailed around the world.

  As Marlowe leaned over the rail, rubbing his eyes and watching the land fade away in the dim light, he cleared his throat.

  “We would cut our journey by a week if we went over land instead of sailing to Catania,” he told Lopez.

  “Did you know that my people invented this kind of vessel?”

  Lopez stared down at the high, rounded stern of the ship.

  “Really? I don’t think of Jews as a great seagoing people.”

  “The Portuguese.” Lopez sighed. “The Portuguese have used what we call the nau for a hundred years or more—to map the world.”

  “This insane ocean voyage will take too long!” Marlowe insisted. “Why are we on a ship at all?”

  Irritated, exhausted, and impatient, Lopez barked back, “You don’t consider the danger of traveling over land through France. Have you already forgotten that we were attacked in the coach from Cambridge to London? You don’t think of how often we would be stopped, or have to change horses, or pause to eat and sleep. On this ship you are as safe as you would be in your own home, and it never has to stop for food or rest. Do you understand that dozens of brilliant men, the Privy Council included, have constructed this plan to the letter? I love you, my friend, but you don’t know everything! We travel by sea for your own safety: you are wanted for murder!”

  “That’s not a genuine concern,” Marlowe scoffed. “You’re my defense against that charge! You know I didn’t do it, and any judge in England would be forced to believe you.”

  Lopez shook his head impatiently. “There are other reasons. It will take awhile to set the rest of Walsingham’s plan in motion: Italy, at Catania, and on the Island of Malta itself. When the time comes, we’ll enter the port of Valletta under assumed identities, as Jewish merchants. That’s essential to the plan, and, of course, the reason I was chosen for this task.”

  “I don’t understand that.”

  “There were, at one time, over five hundred Jews on the island. When the Knights of Saint John took control of Mal
ta, many Jews left. Since the Great Siege of the Ottomans was repulsed by the knights, most Jews on the island are little more than slaves.”

  Marlowe shook his head. “Then why are we masquerading as Jews?”

  “Three reasons,” Lopez answered. “First, free Jews may visit the country through the port in Valletta, which is where our objective, the prisoner, is hidden. Thus our visit to that city will avoid suspicion. Second, no one in his right mind would pretend to be a Jew on Malta, so our identities and our true purpose will be protected. Finally, I can tell you from experience that oppression creates a bond between like-minded people more reliable than religion, heritage, or blood. The network of anti-Catholic resistance on Malta is stronger and more secretive than any in Europe. They are allies made of iron.”

  Marlowe nodded.

  “I see the wisdom of this,” he admitted, “even though the overall plain is utterly mad.”

  “Yes,” Lopez agreed curtly, “and I haven’t told you about the prison itself. It’s impenetrable, under constant guard by over a hundred men; there are several levels and our prize languishes in the bottom-most one.”

  “So, the task is impossible.” Marlowe shrugged. “We’ll manage.”

  Lopez pursed his lips. “There is a final problem: we cannot be certain that our man is still alive.”

  “What?” Marlowe’s eyes widened.

  “I withstood the torture of the Inquisition for a week,” Lopez said quietly, “and nearly perished. I will never be the person I was before that horror. The man we seek to rescue has been a prisoner for nearly three months.”

  “I think of the Inquisition as a thing of the past,” Marlowe mused. “The height of their power was over fifty years ago.”

  Lopez looked away. “For me, the height of their power was three years ago, when they had me in their secret chambers.”

  “So—this man, this prisoner we’re after,” Marlowe said softly, “he might be dead.”

  “And even if he is still alive, it’s very likely that his mind is gone.”

  “And his mind,” Marlowe said, nearly to himself, “is primarily what we need.”

  Lopez nodded.

  “With every new fact or element revealed to me,” Marlowe said, “this enterprise seems increasingly fatal.”

  “Agreed.”

  “Then why are we doing it?”

  “The desperate have no other remedy but hope.”

  “Hope,” Marlowe countered, “is no shield against a sword or an arrow. But there is something else that concerns you, I can see it in your eyes.”

  Lopez looked out to sea. “Has it occurred to you, Chris, to ask why you have been chosen to do this impossible task?”

  Marlowe smiled. “You mean that there are reasons other than my many talents enumerated by Sir Francis Walsingham.”

  “Yes.”

  Marlowe’s mind was set spinning. A hundred answers, and then as many more questions, whirled in his brain. He didn’t speak, but a slow fear began to boil at the back of his neck.

  “Why would they pick me?” he finally said aloud.

  “What would the Privy Council lose,” Lopez said deliberately, “by sacrificing a rash young poet without peerage?”

  Marlowe’s breathing increased. “But you—you’re about to become the Queen’s physician.”

  “I’m a Portuguese Jew,” Lopez answered, exasperated. “I have absolutely no illusions about my real place in the grander scheme of things.”

  “They think we won’t be able to accomplish this task,” Marlowe surmised.

  “Yes, but go on. There’s more to it than even that.”

  “They expect us to be caught and tortured in Malta as spies.”

  “Most likely. And what does that tell you?”

  “They want us to give up what we know,” Marlowe whispered, “because what we know is not true. We’re being deliberately set up as—as decoys; sacrificial pawns.”

  Lopez looked away.

  “If Walsingham fed us false information,” he rasped, “and we give up that information under torture, it would mislead the enemy; give England an advantage.”

  Then the most desperate element of the Privy plan fell into place in Marlowe’s mind.

  “You realize what this could mean,” Marlowe whispered.

  “Go on,” Lopez encouraged, knowing what Marlowe was thinking. “Lay it all out on the table. Say it out loud.”

  “This mysterious prisoner we are to rescue?”

  “Yes?” Lopez encouraged.

  “He may not even exist.”

  “There.” Lopez sat. “That’s the worst of it.”

  Both men sat in silence, each lost in desperate thought, for the span of a quarter of an hour.

  “Well.” Marlowe finally roused himself. “Objectively speaking, it’s not a bad plan on Walsingham’s part. Sacrifice pawns to a knight in order to save the Queen.”

  “Yes,” Lopez answered absently. “Good plan.”

  “Right, then,” Marlowe said, his energy returning. “Give me one good reason we should go on, if it’s true what we’ve just said.”

  Lopez looked up.

  “That’s easy,” he said to Marlowe. “What if everything we’ve just said is wrong?”

  “Then we’d have to go to Malta,” Marlowe agreed, “and gamble that Walsingham told us the truth. Because if he has, we must certainly rescue this prisoner.”

  “Exactly.”

  “What odds would you take?”

  “Half against half,” Lopez said.

  Marlowe smiled. “Well, then. I’ve won with worse odds. Everything’s going to be fine. Let’s get some sleep.”

  Lopez nodded, but neither man moved toward his bed.

  FIVE

  The Channel turned into the Bay of Biscay and then the Atlantic. The ocean at night, black even under a full moon, was calm for the season. Marlowe and Lopez stood on deck, staring silently at the water, each lost in thought. Everyone else on board, save the pilot, was asleep.

  An icy wind cut across the deck, rattled the ropes, and thundered the sails. Lopez drew his crimson cloak around him; Marlowe shivered.

  “If there’s even a chance that our prisoner exists,” Marlowe said for the third time, as much to convince himself as to encourage Lopez, “we have to go through with the plan.”

  Lopez did not respond.

  “I have put myself in his position,” Marlowe went on. “Even if my mind were gone, I would not like to die from Catholic torture in a land so far from home. Just bringing this man back home in any condition would be a worthwhile endeavor.”

  “And of course,” Lopez sighed, “there is always the possibility of a miracle.”

  “Sorry, what?”

  “Despite what most of these Christians in England seem to think,” Lopez told Marlowe, “I am a man of deep faith. I believe in the possibility of miracles. We might survive. This man, this prisoner, he might actually be real, and have information in his head that will save England.”

  “I see.” Marlowe rubbed his arms to get warm. “Well, it’s going to take more than the Maccabees’ lamp oil to save us from this folly.”

  Lopez turned to his friend, smiling. “Do you mock my religion?”

  “Of course not.” Marlowe did his best to seem serious. “Your miracle is lamp oil that lasted for a week, our miracle is a man who came back from the dead, for eternity. Why would I make sport of that?”

  “You don’t see that the metaphor is the same?”

  “What metaphor?” Marlowe scoffed.

  “Light,” Lopez said softly, “in time of darkness.”

  Marlowe smiled at last.

  “So,” he sighed, “we go to Malta; see if we can find some poor bastard that’s got himself stuck in a hole.”

  Lopez returned his gaze to the rolling sea. “I suppose we do.”

  They passed another quarter of an hour in silence, each once more in the prison of his own thoughts, when Marlowe roused himself.

  “Lope
z,” he whispered. “Look.”

  He pointed northward, to the stern of the ship.

  Lopez scanned the sea but was unable to discern whatever it was that Marlowe thought he saw.

  “What is it?” he finally asked Marlowe.

  “Just watch,” Marlowe said slowly, eyes locked on a certain quadrant of the sea, “and in a moment you’ll see one or two of the stars, just at the horizon, blink out and then return, ever so quickly.”

  “A ship?” Lopez answered quickly.

  Another moment of surveillance, and Lopez saw what Marlowe had seen, the merest of moments: stars on the horizon disappeared and came back. There was a ship following them, running without lights.

  “I’ll wake the captain,” Lopez said softly.

  “Should we extinguish some of our lamps?” Marlowe asked.

  “Not yet,” Lopez advised. “We’ll let them think that they’re invisible to us for a moment longer.”

  Lopez moved quickly to the pilot and whispered some short instructions, and then went below. Marlowe stayed on deck, trying to hold the phantom ship’s position in his gaze. It seemed to be gaining on them, but it was impossible to know that for certain.

  A few moments later half the crew emerged from the hold almost silently. The captain stood with Lopez and the pilot, staring in the direction of the pursuing vessel. The rest of the men deployed themselves on deck, hiding. After a moment the captain and Lopez came to Marlowe, on the leeward side. The captain whispered in Portuguese; Lopez translated a second later.

  “Captain de Ferro is afraid that the vessel behind us is the São Martinho,” Lopez told Marlowe, “the flagship of Don Alonso.”

  Marlowe’s throat tightened. “The Duke of Medina Sedonia.”

  “Yes.”

  “The greatest commander of all the Spanish naval forces.”

  “He’s not certain,” Lopez hedged. “It could be the São Martinho. He says.”

  “It has forty-eight heavy guns,” Marlowe said, unable to keep the concern from his voice. “It’s a Portuguese ship like the ones you were bragging about. Only much better!”

  “Não se preocupe,” said the captain.

  “He’s telling you not to worry,” Lopez translated.

  “I disagree!” Marlowe raged. “We should be very, very worried. We have a giant Spanish warship up our backside!”