A Prisoner in Malta

by Phillip DePoy

  Lying in that field in France, he knew he was in love with her. He also knew that she had feelings for him, but would never acknowledge them, not even to herself. The daughter of the most powerful man in England was unlikely to glance more than once at the son of a cobbler.

  In the end he began to compose lines of poetry in his head.

  “It lies not in our power to love or hate,” he thought. “For will, in us, is overruled by fate.”

  * * *

  A sudden flurry of approaching footsteps roused Marlowe from his contemplation. His heart jumped a bit. There was no telling who was about to come into that room.

  The door swung wide and Sir Francis Walsingham strode in, dressed in deep burgundy, skullcap atop his head. Behind him there were two guards and a remarkably beautiful young woman. She was adorned in blue satin and lace. Her hair was pulled back and decorated with violets the exact color of her dress.

  Marlowe gasped and held his breath.

  Walsingham moved briskly to the desk and sat. The young woman took a chair at the table, eyes down. Marlowe watched as the guards drew weapons, stepped into the hall, and closed the door behind them.

  It took the entirely of Marlowe’s strength to remain silent.

  His fortitude was rewarded, at last, when Walsingham looked up and Marlowe saw that the old man’s eyes were red—from sleeplessness or tears, it was impossible to tell.

  “As you know,” Walsingham began, his voice hoarse, “my—my daughter, Frances, was able to obtain a great deal of information this past Christmastide while she was ensconced at Coughton Court, the Throckmorton home in Warwickshire. She posed there in the guise of the sickly Richard, whom you have met. Unfortunately, someone in that household, we do not yet know who, alerted Throckmorton to the possibility that Richard might be a spy. As my daughter was bound for London, she was taken prisoner and held on Malta.

  “That might have been the end of the story but for the fact that,” Walsingham paused and consulted several papers in front of him on the desk, and then said, “a certain person by the name of Tin, a serving girl smitten with—with Richard, happened to overhear that something had happened to Richard on the way back to London. Tin, the rare girl herself, able to both read and write, penned a letter to the courtier she supposed to be Richard’s father. The missive came to me, and your recent adventure was set in motion. What you do not know—”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, Father,” the girl at the table sighed impatiently, “Marlowe isn’t one of your idiot underlings. He’s a genius: a poet possessed of a remarkable mind, and a swordsman second to none. Please don’t give him speeches, especially about facts of which he is largely aware already. Just speak.”

  Marlowe realized then that the lovely young woman seated at the table was Frances Walsingham. He would not have recognized her at all but for the fact that she’d called the old man “father.” He studied her perfect oval face, the blush in her cheeks, the dark green eyes—he should know that face anywhere, but he found himself searching for any other sign of the ragged girl in men’s clothing. There were golden hoops in this woman’s ears, and a starched white collar held her neck stiffly. The dress was ornate, though not overdone, and revealed less of her figure than had the ill-fitting uniform from the Ascension. Her hands were white as snow, not at all the hands that had held swords and battled men. Primarily it was her demeanor that made this woman a different person from the girl he’d come to know. This woman was not a gallant spy. She was a lady-in-waiting at the court of Queen Elizabeth.

  He realized then that he was staring, and felt a fool for not having recognized her as soon as she had entered the room.

  “I—I,” Marlowe stammered, staring at Frances.

  She stood. “This is all a bit too awkward for everyone. Let me speak plainly, then, if my father will not.”

  Marlowe nodded. Out of the corner of his eye he could see that Walsingham, too, was nodding.

  “Christopher Marlowe,” she continued, extending her hand, “you saved my life, and, more important, you may have saved our Queen. I am in your debt, as is your country.”

  Marlowe stared at the white hand, so close to his body.

  “I am uncertain,” he managed to say, forcing the merest smile, “whether I am to kiss this hand, or clasp it.”

  He turned to Walsingham.

  “You see, my lord,” he went on, “I have come to know this individual, a little, during our travels, and found her to be the bravest person I have ever met. My admiration for her is boundless, as is my respect. On our arduous journey from the banks of Italy to the streets of London, we—I was constantly astonished by her ability to—”

  “Marlowe means to say,” she interrupted, coming to stand by his side.

  But her father would not let her finish.

  “I began to train my daughter in the art of spy craft when she was nine years old,” Walsingham snorted, not looking at either of the other two. “She has so far exceeded my wildest hopes, that I, too, Mr. Marlowe, find myself constantly amazed by her. She is sufficient unto herself. She needs nothing and no one. She is a more formidable child than any man’s son on this planet.”

  “The point is,” Frances interjected, obviously encouraging her father to proceed with his business, “that I stand here as a result of Mr. Marlowe’s efforts, and you wish to thank him for his service.”

  “Ah,” the old man said, and sniffed. “Yes. Well. Christopher Marlowe, you are as of this moment in my direct employ. A small fee will be paid into a secret account for your benefit only. Of course, none of what we’re saying in this room can be known by anyone else. To the rest of the world, you are still a student, a poet.”

  “I don’t understand what it means,” Marlowe began, “to be in your employ.”

  “Your immediate task is to address the murder charge against you,” Walsingham answered gravely. “That circumstance is most severe.”

  “But the solution is immediately at hand,” Marlowe insisted. “Dr. Lopez will testify that we left Pygott very much alive in Cambridge. Lopez will be in London any day, and there’s an end to the ridiculous charges.”

  “You misunderstand,” Frances said softly.

  Walsingham looked away. “We have received word.”

  “Rodrigo Lopez,” Frances explained, barely above a whisper, “is dead.”

  Marlowe was certain that his exhaustion and the rigors of travel had affected his hearing, or his comprehension.

  “Dead? No.” He shook his head. “That can’t be. He was fine when we left him on the beach. And—and he is a man who cannot be killed. He’s not dead. You’ve been misinformed.”

  “We received a missive from Captain de Ferro,” Walsingham confided. “He found the doctor and another man beside a longboat on the shores of Sicily, near Pozzallo. Each had been shot at least a dozen times, stabbed repeatedly. Both men were dead.”

  “It wasn’t Lopez,” Marlowe insisted, but his voice had weakened.

  “I’m afraid it was, my boy,” Walsingham said, almost warmly. “It’s a great loss to the nation, and to our Queen. He twice saved her life. He was to be the royal physician.”

  “He told me.” Marlowe’s head was swimming. “I’ll—I’ll return to Sicily. I’ll find the men who killed him.”

  “No,” Walsingham said simply. “You will return, under some disguise, to Cambridge. You will find the murderer of this boy Pygott. That is your only mission!”

  “What?”

  “Listen to me.” Walsingham stood up, his voice gaining strength once more. “I have plans for you. Her Majesty has plans for you. You’ve been tested and found to be superior in every way. You saved the life of my daughter, England’s finest spy. There are great things in store for you. Things you cannot accomplish from the end of a hangman’s rope.”

  Marlowe opened his mouth to further protest, and then his mind cleared, and he saw something on Walsingham’s face.

  “There’s more to Pygott’s death than the revenge killing
of a bully,” Marlowe concluded. “This has something to do with his father, a man with wealth and connections. Sir John Pygott is one of Throckmorton’s conspirators.”

  Frances turned to her father, a faint smile on her face.

  “I told you he was quick.”

  Walsingham nodded. “This is a paltry man with middling means, unhampered by learning or wit.”

  “Well,” Marlowe agreed, “that’s Walter Pygott, certainly.”

  “Was,” Frances corrected. “That was Walter Pygott. You must ask yourself who might wish to see him dead.”

  Marlowe shook his head.

  “I must ask myself who would not wish it,” he mused. “That would be a smaller number. Everyone at the campus hated him, and with good cause. He was a bully and a braggart and he had bad hair. But knowing that his father is a traitor to our Queen, I begin to suspect that the son might have had some small part in the treachery, and that is what got him killed.”

  Walsingham smiled. “There you are, Marlowe! There is the man England needs, who can digest tragic news and still turn his mind to the pressing task at hand. Yes, we believe that Walter Pygott’s death is the result of chicanery and plotting. The attempt to blame you for the murder is a part of a larger ploy to eliminate you as our agent.”

  Marlowe stared into space. “Solve Pygott’s murder and I pull a thread that may unravel the larger tapestry.”

  Walsingham let go a sigh. “Exactly.”

  Frances came close and touched Marlowe’s arm. There was a palpable spark, but everyone in the room ignored it.

  “Come, then,” she said. “Let us see to your disguise, and plan your next few moves.”

  “Resolve this business with all haste,” Walsingham admonished. “The plot against the life of our Queen is at hand, perhaps not even days away. Go now.”

  With that the door swung open and guards entered.

  Frances tugged on Marlowe’s arm, leading him from the room.

  When they were gone, Walsingham sat down once more, shuffled the papers on his desk, and then smiled.

  TWELVE

  CAMBRIDGE

  It was a small room, but close to the college. Marlowe stood in the doorway staring at the wreckage of his former home away from home. He studied every inch of the place. It was eight foot square with a small window and two narrow closets, one for personal items and the other for a basin and chamber pot. The desk had been overturned, and black ink was everywhere. Torn scraps of paper were strewn wildly. The worst of it was the bed. It had been torn apart. All four posts had been broken, and the mattress, or what was left of it, was revolting. It appeared to have exploded from the inside, and there was evidence of blood and viscera. A bizarre odor of decay and citrus hung in the air, despite the open window. Someone had attempted to obviate the smell of a dead body by rubbing lemons on everything.

  Marlowe was uncomfortable in his disguise. The skullcap was tied too tightly under his chin, and glue from the theatrical ginger beard itched. The odd cassock he’d been forced to wear was constructed so that he had to stoop a bit, as if his back were slightly twisted. He had only seen himself for a second in a looking glass, but he was certain that even his own father would not know him.

  As he stepped into the room at last, he heard a slight rustling behind him. Stepping quickly behind the door, he drew out his dagger.

  “It’s a fine room,” an ancient female voice called out, “if you don’t look at the shape it’s in at the moment.”

  Marlowe stepped from behind the door, knife in hand. The woman was Nell Whatley, the owner of the Pickerel Inn and, therefore, also the owner of the room. The bar below was a bit on the rough side, but Nell was well known for keeping things in hand. She was as short as she was wide, covered in a stained green apron, and she carried a well-used wooden bat in her right hand.

  “The only thing there is to see here,” he said pointedly, “is disaster. What happened?”

  “What happened?” She shrugged. “You know college boys. Bit of fun is all.”

  “No.” Marlowe deliberately stared her down, daring her to recognize him. “There was a dead body found in this room. It’s the gossip of the town.”

  “Ah.” Her shoulders sagged, but only a little. “Well, yes, as it happens, the boy who lived here, a new student from the countryside and a bit of a wild one, killed another student and tried to hide the body in that mattress.”

  “That seems unlikely,” Marlowe said. “You can’t hide a body in a mattress that thin.”

  “I thought so too when I opened up the door,” she agreed, “but that’s what the law says, and I never disagrees with the law. Especially when they’re wrong. You calls it out when they’re wrong and it only makes for trouble.”

  “So you were here when the constabulary found the body.”

  “I had to open the door for them, didn’t I?” She took a good look around. “God, they made a mess, worse than what was here to begin with.”

  “And you’ve left it as it was? Were you asked to do that?”

  “Well.” She shrugged. “What was the point? I mean, if someone was to take the room, of course, I’d have it cleaned.”

  “Here’s my offer, then,” Marlowe said coldly. “Cut your rate in half, I’ll clean up the room myself, pay for at least a month in advance, and keep mostly to myself about it.”

  “Half?” She coughed. “I don’t think so.”

  “All right.” Marlowe put away his knife and headed for the door. “I’ll just go downstairs, have an ale, and begin describing the look of this room, and the smell, to everyone there. In a very loud voice. I speak loudly when I’ve had ale.”

  “Half it is,” Nell said quickly, holding out her hand.

  Marlowe moved just as swiftly, placing the exact amount in her hand, and ushering her, unceremoniously, backward out the door.

  “What made the law come to you in the first place?” he asked as she stepped out into the hall. “Did someone put them up to it?”

  “Doubtless,” she agreed. “But everyone in the place was complaining about the stench, weren’t they? Thought it was something dead in the Cam at first, but the smell was inside, not outside. So.”

  “The smell made people complain, you’re saying?”

  She nodded.

  “What sort of people? Other students who live here?”

  “Not just them,” she told him. “It was customers down in the bar as well.”

  “Any customer in particular?” Marlowe asked, his hand on the door. “I mean a regular or a stranger?”

  “Let me think.” She held out her hand.

  Marlowe sighed and placed a coin in the outstretched palm.

  “Now you mention it,” she said, not looking at him, “it was a rude tough that’s been in several times before and since what complained at first.”

  “Before anyone else noticed the smell.”

  “Well”—she turned to leave—“before I noticed it, anyway.”

  “When I come downstairs later,” Marlowe called, “you’ll point that man out to me, if he’s there.”

  “If he’s there,” she answered, taking the stairs, “and if my memory don’t fail me, you see what I mean.”

  “You’ll make full price on this room yet,” Marlowe said.

  “And you’ll ask one too many questions after a while,” she told Marlowe, not looking back. “That room may have another tenant all too soon.”

  Ignoring her, Marlowe turned and surveyed the room again with a more objective eye. It was clear that only an idiot could believe the so-called evidence. No one would murder a man in his own room and then try to stuff the dead body into his mattress. And yet the indictment, shown to him by Frances, was clear:

  Christopher Marley indicted for manslaughter in that he did, on or about March the twenty-fifth kill and murder one Walter Pygott, son of John Pygott, Esq., the proof upon investigation being the discovery of a body identified as Walter Pygott in the room of this Christopher Marley found above the Pi
ckerel Inn. Said Marley having fled and no other evidence being presented, the indictment stands.

  Marlowe moved about the room slowly, examining the mattress, the overturned desk, and the papers on the floor. It was lucky that the old woman hadn’t cleaned. The first thing that struck him was that there was not enough blood in the mattress. If the body had been stabbed on the bed, or in the room, for that matter, there would have been much more blood. Next he noticed spilt ink that covered a portion of the floor in one corner. Someone had stepped in that ink and left a bootprint. The heel and sole of that print were very distinctive: the heel tapered backward, and was smaller than most English heels. The sole came to a sharper point than most English boots. The print had been made by Spanish footwear. A closer examination of the floor revealed that the print had been stamped several times in ink about the room. It was small and the strides were short. The man who wore those boots was barely five feet tall. Marlowe silently thanked God that his father was a boot-maker. The prints could have been produced by the Spaniard in the group of men who attacked the coach on the way to London. Marlowe realized the wisdom of Lopez’s opinion: those men should have been killed.

  After searching about on the floor around the desk, he found a piece of paper that had been imprinted with a nearly complete Spanish bootprint. The ink had dried. He carefully folded the page and tucked it into his robe.

  Thus encouraged, he scoured the room for more clues. No other footprints were proffered, but he found a torn bit of cloth on one of the bedposts. The cloth was clearly not from Pygott’s foppish haberdashery; it was a ruder fabric. He pocketed the rag.

  The wool stuffing inside the foul mattress was clotted with blood and smelled like decaying rats. Marlowe donned his gloves, held his breath, and combed through the wool. He was rewarded with a farthing and a sixpence, both dirty. It was impossible to say, of course, that they’d belonged to Pygott, but Marlowe reasoned that they wouldn’t have gotten into his mattress any other way. And there was a satisfying bit of irony in imagining that he would buy several pints of ale with dead Pygott’s sixpence.

  It occurred to Marlowe then to examine the door. It had never been broken, not battered, not forced in any way. That said to him that Nell Whatley may have known more about the murder than she let on, because she had unlocked the door for the murderers as well as the law. It was possible, of course, that they had stolen the key. But Marlowe had seen her take the key from a chain around her neck, a chain that hung low and sank into her bosom. It was more likely that she’d been paid, or coerced.