“The beauty of that particular story,” Marlowe acknowledged, “is that Rebec would only be telling the truth, allowing wagging tongues to do the rest.”
“There are several young men who might be suspected,” Frances said. “There is no dearth of ridiculous suitors at Coughton.”
“And by the time all those fine young men are accounted for and greater suspicions have grown,” Tin concluded, “you’ll be in London, putting an end to this Throckmorton plot.”
Geordie looked down. He kicked the straw at his feet, sniffed, and nodded after a moment.
“Right, then,” he said. “It might do.”
“You’re in no danger, father,” Tin said gently. “No one will suspect you had anything to do with this.”
“It’s not me I’m worried about,” he said softly, still staring at his feet.
Before he could elucidate, the stable dog, which Geordie had stationed in the open courtyard, began to bark.
Everyone moved. Marlowe stepped into the next stall and began to dress the pair of horses there. Frances stood close by, squinting impatiently, as if to scold her servant. Tin headed for her tiny bedchamber behind her father’s rooms where Frances’s kit had been hidden. Geordie and Rebec went to quiet the dog who had, as it turned out, been barking at crows.
Within a quarter of an hour, Frances and Marlowe had gone off toward the west at a leisurely pace, Frances leading, her groomsman dutifully behind. Tin had loaded a pack mule with Frances’s things and disguised them with blankets, heading in the direction of Northampton.
Geordie was in the stables, inspecting the right front shoe of a horse near the front entrance. And Rebec was sitting on the ground outside, petting the dog.
After a moment she glanced into the darkened stables because she heard what might be the sound of someone crying. She stood, brushed her hands on the front of her dirty dress, and tiptoed in.
She found Geordie in the first stall patting the horse and brushing tears from his eyes.
“What’s the matter?” Rebec asked, wide-eyed.
“It’s Tin,” he rasped.
“What about her?”
“I’ll never see her again.”
“What?”
“She’s gone to London,” he lamented, “and she’ll never come back.”
“London?” Rebec said. “No. She’s going to Northampton.”
“That’s what she said, all right,” Geordie sighed, “but I know better. I saw that mule. She packed all of her things along with Miss Frances’s kit. She’s gone. My little girl is gone. I’ve lost my only daughter.”
He struggled mightily against an impulse to sob.
Rebec came into the stall and took his hand.
“Well,” she began tentatively, “my father is dead, and your girl is gone. Maybe we could come to some sort of an arrangement, you and me?”
Geordie looked down at the sad, expectant face. The dog wandered in and sat, the only audience to the scene. There was no further dialogue in that particular play, and eventually the dog wandered away in search of a warm place to nap.
TWENTY-SEVEN
LONDON AND COURT
Once again Marlowe found himself standing in a small room in the Palace of Whitehall. Unlike the others in which he’d met Walsingham, there were several chairs and a table, but no desk. This room was bigger, and all four walls were covered with matching tapestries, each depicting a larger-than-life-size musician playing an instrument. Represented were the sackbut, a lone viol, a small crumhorn, and a tilted virginal—an odd quartet.
It was impossible to tell how big the room was. Anything, or anyone, might be hidden behind those hangings.
Without warning Walsingham stormed into the room from behind the sackbut player. He had a sheaf of papers under one arm and a monstrously distracted scowl on his face. He stood behind the desk, staring down at something on its surface.
“So,” he boomed unceremoniously, not bothering to look at Marlowe, “you’ve found Pygott’s killer.”
“Not exactly,” Marlowe began.
“Carier is a pestilence,” Walsingham interrupted.
“Yes,” Marlowe agreed hastily, “but I haven’t found him yet.”
Walsingham looked up.
“He is in London,” Marlowe continued, “with Ingram Frizer, who is, I am convinced, primarily in the employ of the Spanish king. He may even be the Pope’s man. He is certainly not your double agent.”
“Frizer is only a distraction,” Walsingham growled. “Carier is the game.”
“Yes,” Marlowe said, and took a breath.
But even his breath was interrupted.
“You’ve done well,” Walsingham said absently, looking down once more. “You solved your murder, and in doing so you’ve also discovered Throckmorton’s instrument of assassination.”
“Lord Walsingham,” Marlowe snapped impatiently, “I have done neither.”
Walsingham looked up once more. He set down the papers he’d been carrying. He sat.
“What are you saying?” he asked quietly.
“I am saying that I have suspicions, I have very few pieces of evidence, some gossip, and several dozen questions. That is, at the moment, the extent of my investigation.”
“But Frances has told me,” Walsingham snorted.
“I do beg your pardon,” Marlowe interjected, this time his turn to interrupt, “but I have not told Frances everything.”
The scowl on Walsingham’s face became a threat.
Marlowe hastened to explain. “It must be obvious to you that I have a great affection for your daughter, Lord Walsingham—too great, in fact,” he said quickly, with as great an air of deference as he could muster, “and I would do anything to protect her from harm.”
Marlowe stood very still, letting what he’d said fill the air.
“What could you not tell her?” Walsingham asked.
Marlowe drew in a slow breath. He felt his face flush. A tingle of uncertainty edged the back of his neck.
“I could not tell her that you were the one who betrayed her to Throckmorton,” Marlowe said steadily, “and had her imprisoned in Malta.”
Walsingham glared, his eyes ablaze. It was an expression that might have murdered other men. But he did not disagree with Marlowe’s bold statement.
“Of course you had no direct contact with Throckmorton,” Marlowe went on, staring firmly back at Walsingham’s burning gaze. “You somehow had the idea planted in Walter Pygott’s mind, so that he would believe he had discovered a spy. I knew something was amiss the moment I heard that. Walter Pygott possessed the observational skills of a dead vole. He couldn’t discover the balls in his own codpiece.”
Walsingham sat back. His expression changed slowly. It was an oddly familiar one. It took Marlowe a moment to realize that the Queen’s spymaster looked, at least a little, like Professor Bartholomew. It was the mien of a Socratic instructor.
“And why, in heaven’s name, would I do such a thing as betray my own daughter?” Walsingham asked slowly.
“I can think of a dozen reasons.” Marlowe leaned forward imperceptibly. “You might do it to test her, though it would be a harsh father who could condemn a daughter to the place I saw on that island. It was more likely a feint to confuse Throckmorton, to make him believe that he’d discovered a spy, to allow him a false sense of safety. You had no idea that Frances would be taken to Malta. That’s why you were in such a panic to rescue her that you turned to Dr. Lopez and his strange student friend at Cambridge.”
“Mr. Marlowe,” Walsingham sighed.
But Marlowe would not relent. His voice gained strength. “I suppose it’s possible that you were testing the Pygott family, assessing their loyalties. It may even be that you sought to expose Frizer for the traitor he is. Oh, and by the by, I have suspicions about Bartholomew as well. You may have had them, too, which might have somehow figured into your bizarre shadow play.”
Walsingham stared at Marlowe for what seemed an hour.
“And you’ve come to these conclusions,” the old man said slowly, his voice thin, “based upon what evidence?”
“Pygott was not capable of lacing his shirt, as I say,” Marlowe railed, “let alone discovering a spy as cunning as your daughter! Also there is entirely too much fuss about Pygott’s death. No one liked him. The warrant for my arrest is flimsy even by rural standards. His own father, as I have learned, doesn’t actually care that he’s dead, though someone is trying to make me believe he’s hired a small army of assassins to kill me. Instead, these assassins work for a larger purpose, on the side of the Spanish. That they keep me from discovering Pygott’s murderer is, to them, unimportant.”
Marlowe glared at Walsingham, daring him to disagree with anything he’d said.
“Please, do not fall silent now.” Walsingham nodded, encouraging Marlowe to go on.
“It has been brought to my attention by several people,” Marlowe continued more tentatively, “that you might be testing me.”
Walsingham sat still, as frozen as the musician on the tapestry behind him.
So Marlowe forged ahead. “For example, I do not know why you would choose me to save your daughter. No one seems to know. I can only assume that a great many of the things that have happened to me since Lopez fetched me from Cambridge and delivered me to you have been tests. The other possibility is that I was a pawn easily lost in the greater game. Who would miss an upstart student and the son of a boot-maker? You gambled with my life, and with the life of my friend Rodrigo Lopez. It was a devil’s gambit that lost you Her Majesty’s best physician.”
“I see.” Walsingham closed his eyes.
Marlowe opened his mouth to go on, thought better of it, and bit his lower lip. Instead, he paused and waited. Walsingham would speak eventually, and something would be revealed.
“You are half right about some things,” Walsingham confessed, wearily emphasizing the qualifying syllables.
“It is true to some minor extent,” Walsingham went on after a moment, “that we wanted to discover who killed Pygott, and that investigation also provided us with an opportunity to further test your capabilities, as you put it. And you did discover that the same man who would kill our Queen is the murderer you seek, which is very convenient.”
“And was it convenient as well that Dr. Lopez lost his life in the theatre of your testing?”
Marlowe knew, even as the words flew from his mouth, that he should not have spoken them.
Oddly, Walsingham seemed not to hear the question at all.
“But we must put all of this aside for the moment,” the spymaster said crisply, “and set to more important work immediately. If your intelligence is correct, this assassin, Carier, will attempt to murder Her Majesty within the next twenty-four hours, before she leaves Hampton Court. You will find him and stop him. You will attempt to report him to the authorities, without reference to the offices of the Queen if possible, simply as the true murderer of Walter Pygott. You have, I am told, evidence to that effect.”
“I—no, I—I have a button.”
Walsingham nodded once. “The fate of the nation has depended, many times, on less.”
“I have a button.”
“Use it to obtain a confession.” Walsingham said it as if it were simple, obvious.
Marlowe’s mind drifted slightly. “I may also have an eyewitness, a priest in Cambridge.”
“Employ whatever methods you think best,” Walsingham snapped impatiently. “Here.”
He shoved several papers toward Marlowe.
“It’s been arranged,” the old man went on, “that you will ally yourself with William Allen, the man in charge of the College of Douai at Rheims.”
“Allen? Yes.” Marlowe nodded, forcing himself to focus. “Carier will be with Allen, and the rest who would foment revolt from within our own country after they’ve killed the Queen.”
Walsingham nodded, his impatience growing. “Allen is here in London and has been told of your father’s affiliation with the Catholic Church. He believes that you would work in the Catholic cause. We’ve arranged to have you meet with him tonight.”
Marlowe’s head was swimming. “This is all—everything is happening quite quickly.”
“These events are in motion now.” Walsingham stood. “You have no time to digest the meal I’ve just forced down your gullet. You must be off without delay. These papers instruct you. They will tell you where to meet Allen, assure your safe passage to the man, and offer him evidence of your fealty to his cause.”
“Frances?”
Walsingham turned away, and a guard, who had been hidden all along, pulled back a tapestry revealing the door through which Marlowe had entered.
“My daughter has suspicions of her own,” Walsingham mumbled, striding toward the door, “things she has not told you. She is approaching Allen’s main cohort, the Jesuit priest Robert Parsons, with a mad plan of her own design.”
With that, the old man was gone.
Marlowe stood alone in the room, and was suddenly cold.
* * *
The eastern wall of Fulham Palace blocked out the stars. Frances Walsingham leaned against it, smiling. She could hear voices inside through the open window next to her. She took a moment to adjust the dagger hidden in her boot and then rounded the corner toward the guarded door.
“Who’s that?” one of the guards called out, jittery.
“I have a message for Robert Parsons,” Frances whispered loudly.
She moved toward the door with a display of subservience.
“What’s the message?” the other guard asked.
“Pardon,” Frances squeaked, “I am to give it only to Robert Parsons.”
A voice from inside snapped, “What’s all that, Groot?”
The first guard answered, “Some girl. Says she’s got a message for you.”
“Send her away!” the voice commanded.
“It’s from Bess Throckmorton, sir,” Frances called out. “Most urgent, she says.”
A moment of silence was followed by the sudden appearance of a cleric in the doorway.
“Keep your voice down!” he commanded. “Get inside.”
He stepped back and Frances entered. Down a short hall and to her right she found the man in a small dining room. Seven or eight men, two of them sitting at the large oak table, turned to look at her as she came in. The room was ablaze with candles, bright as day. Despite the soft spring night, there was a fire in the hearth. A stack of paper, a pen and inkwell, and a dozen or more muskets adorned the tabletop.
The man Frances had followed sat down at the head of the table and stared at her.
“Well?” he said, irritated.
“Are you Robert Parsons?” she asked, managing to sound frightened.
“Yes. God. What is your message?”
“I’m to say that Bess has been called back to Coughton by her father,” Frances began with a deliberately tentative air, “and that I am to take her place in the—in the business at hand.”
Every eye looked her way.
“Why has her father summoned her?”
“She told me that he feared for her safety in this enterprise, but she also apprised me of her mission. I stand ready to carry it out.”
Parsons licked his lips. “I see.”
One of the other men at the table leaned close to Parsons’s ear and whispered. Parsons smiled.
Without a word his eyes flicked to the man nearest Frances. He took her by her arm and tugged hard.
“And I stand ready as well, Frances Walsingham,” Parsons sneered. “Your captivity shall provide further safety for our endeavor. Have a seat. You will compose a note to your father.”
With that Frances stomped her boot heel down and the man who held her howled in pain. Before he even let go of her arm, Frances had pulled her dagger and stabbed the man three times.
Ducking to the floor as the man fell, she slid under that table and threw her knife toward the head of the
table, but Parsons had already shoved himself aside and stood.
Frances grabbed the foot of one of the other men at the table and pulled hard, toppling the man with a thud. She reached out and kicked him, turned him, and freed his rapier from its sheath.
Rolling, she emerged from the table just in time to stab at a man who held a pistol. The pistol went off, but only damaged the table.
She got to her feet and turned. Parsons and two others faced her from the other side of the table, each holding a musket.
“I don’t want to kill you yet,” Parsons allowed, “because you’re too useful to me alive. For the moment. So put down that rapier and pick up the pen. You’re going to write a letter to your father.”
Frances turned her eyes to the man who had whispered to Parsons.
“This would have worked if you hadn’t given me away,” she said to him.
“You are not a modest young woman,” the anonymous man responded, his accent vaguely French. “Anyone who has ever been to court would know you.”
“But not anyone at court would betray our Queen,” she said. “All it will mean to you tonight is that you’ll be the first to die.”
With that she tossed the rapier backhanded and it flew through the air into the man’s heart.
As she did it, she dropped once more to the floor, but not quickly enough to escape the musket blast that tore through her lovely blue dress.
* * *
Marlowe stood outside St. Etheldreda’s Church, one of the oldest places of worship in the city. Publicly, of course, it was Church of England, but everyone knew that Catholic masses were offered there in secret nearly every week. Only a few years earlier it had been leased to Sir Christopher Hatton, said to be one of the Queen’s bed partners. The rent was £10, ten loads of hay, and one red rose per year—a fee so little that it only increased the gossip about Her Majesty and Sir Christopher. It didn’t help matters that Hatton used the crypt as a tavern. It was in that tavern that Marlowe was to meet William Allen.
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