by Glenn Cooper
It was on a piece of note paper, in Elisabetta’s neat handwriting:
I know Zazo told me not to leave the apartment but I had an urgent call to see Prof. De Stefano at his flat at 14 Via Premuda. I’ll be fine. Will be back before 11. Elisabetta.
‘I’m calling Zazo,’ Micaela said, fishing through her bag for her mobile phone.
Zazo flipped his phone shut and looked at his watch. ‘Unbelievable,’ he muttered.
‘What’s up?’ Lorenzo asked. They were walking together through one of the Vatican staff parking lots.
‘Besides my father, my sister Elisabetta’s the smartest Celestino but sometimes she’s so dumb. I’ve got to run over to the Via Premuda. It’ll take me five minutes to get there. I’ll be back in fifteen and we can finish up for the night.’
The taxi driver was held up by some road-repair works that doubled the duration of the ride. Despite carrying a nun as a fare, he insisted on cursing and making lewd gestures out the window most of the way.
He left Elisabetta in front of a smart apartment block clad in pink limestone with freshly painted green window shutters. De Stefano was listed on the first floor. She was quickly buzzed in and walked up one flight to his apartment. She used the small brass knocker and waited.
The door opened too rapidly for politeness.
A man stood there but it wasn’t De Stefano.
She recognized his blank face immediately. It was the telephone-booth man, her attacker from long ago, and, she realized in an instant, the man who’d broken into the convent. He had a gun.
Before Elisabetta could do more than let out a horrified gasp he grabbed a handful of her habit and pulled her inside.
Zazo pressed the buzzer for De Stefano’s apartment and when he didn’t get a reply he pressed all the apartments’ buzzers simultaneously until someone buzzed him through.
When he got to the top of the stairs there was the briefest vision down the hall of black cloth disappearing through a door. Then the door slammed hard.
Zazo drew his SIG from his holster, pulled back the slide to chamber a round and tried to steady his shaking hands.
Elisabetta was on her knees, thrown to the ground by the violent jerk of the man’s arm. The copy of the Faustus book fell from her bag onto the tiles.
She saw through to the sitting room. De Stefano was on the floor, blood oozing from an eye.
She looked up. The man was holding his arm out. He was aiming a pistol at the top of her head.
It was happening too fast – not even enough time to think the name of the Lord.
There was a loud crash.
Zazo’s boot crashed through the lock plate, splintering wood and throwing the door open.
The explosions were so thunderous that Elizabetta wouldn’t be able to hear properly for a week. Zazo fired eight rounds in five seconds. Years of simulator training kicked in automatically: aim for center mass. Keep firing until empty. Expel the spent magazine and slide in the spare.
Elisabetta’s pearly-white vest was stained red with the man’s arterial blood. Her ears rang so loudly that her own screams seemed far away.
The only thing she was able to focus on was an exceedingly small detail.
A glistening drop of blood clung to the cover of the Faustus book, then slowly soaked itself into the porous leather.
THIRTEEN
Surrey, England, 1584
THIS TIME IT was Thomas Lewgar who was pacing and trying to calm his nerves outside the examination hall. Inside, Christopher Marlowe huddled in a corner of the hall with Master Norgate and the two other questioners for Lewgar’s disputation, Robert Cecil and an MA student from another college.
Norgate had a parchment which he waved under the questioners’ noses. ‘To be perfectly frank, Mister Lewgar is a somewhat marginal candidate. He needs to excel in this disputation to succeed in his baccalaureate. I know his father well. He is a prominent man in Norwich. It would not pain me to see Lewgar do well today which is why I was keen for Master Marlowe to join this committee. As his friend I expect you will do your utmost to be helpful in the line of questioning.’
‘Yes, sir,’ Marlowe said.
‘Now,’ Norgate said, referring to his parchment, ‘I have three questions we might put to him. The first: In the sight of God sins are then truly venial when they are feared by men to be mortal.’
The committee nodded.
‘The second: The love of God does not find, but creates that which is pleasing to it.’
Again nods.
‘And the third is less of a theological nature and more of a mathematical and philosophical one. It is: The mathematical order of material things is ingeniously maintained by Pythagoras, but more ingenious is the interaction of ideas maintained by Plato. What say you?’
Something triggered inside him. Marlowe was conscious of the blood coursing through his body; he could almost taste it, metallic in his mouth. ‘I would note, Sir, that Thomas has always said to me how much he enjoys the mathematical arts and the contribution of the Greeks to our state of knowledge.’
Cecil looked up in surprise but said nothing.
‘Very well,’ Norgate said. ‘Pythagoras it shall be.’
By three in the afternoon the spectacle was over. Few could remember a more disastrous final disputation. Norgate called the proceedings to a close when it was apparent that Lewgar could do no more than repeat the same inaccurate and insubstantial points over and over. The young man was reduced to wet eyes and chest heaving and by the end only the hardest men in the audience could take pleasure in the spectacle.
When Norgate pronounced from his chair that the candidate had not attained his BA, Lewgar practically ran from the hall.
‘Most unfortunate,’ Norgate told the committee and was gone himself.
Cecil drew Marlowe aside with a look as much amused as perplexed. ‘I thought Lewgar was your friend.’
‘He is,’ Marlowe said. ‘Perhaps my closest at the college.’
‘Yet you had him orate on a topic he was least prepared to defend.’
‘I suppose I did.’
Cecil leaned in. ‘I’m impressed by the cut of your sails, Master Marlowe. The Marlowes are known to us, you know.’
Marlowe thought, Us? ‘Is that so?’ he said.
‘I wonder if you would accompany me to London tomorrow. There’s someone I would very much like you to meet.’ Then he put his lips an inch from Marlowe’s ear and whispered, ‘I know what you are.’
He was the most fearsome man that Marlowe had ever seen. He had deep-socketed unforgiving eyes which seemed to be capable of piercing a mind and reading one’s soul. His face was finely chiseled and aquiline. The way he could hold his facial muscles perfectly immobile made him seem as though he had been hewn from a block of dusky cold marble. His doublet and cloak were of the finest fabric, befitting a minister of the Queen.
Marlowe was in the man’s Great Room at Barn Elms in Surrey, having just arrived by river boat from London with Robert Cecil. The mansion, built from limestone from the Catholic churches razed by Elizabeth’s father, King Henry, was the most splendid house Marlowe had ever seen. From the river, in the last light of the evening, it seemed to go on forever. Inside, the paneling, wainscoting, tapestries and heraldic wall-hangings left him breathless with the desire to possess this kind of life.
‘Sir Francis,’ Cecil said, ‘I present to you Master Christopher Marlowe.’
Francis Walsingham. Principal Secretary to the Queen. Her spymaster and torturer. The man she called her Moor, because of his dark complexion and somber demeanor. The most dangerous man in England.
‘Welcome to my house, gentlemen. It’s good to escape from Whitehall into the rejuvenating countryside on occasion. Have you seen the Baron Burghley, Robert?’
‘I have not. I will seek out father when we return to London.’
‘Excellent. Make sure he gives you an audience with the Queen. You must be mindful of your career. Now, I have some good wine for you,
a nice Spanish aligaunte. It’s made by Papists who despise our Queen Elizabeth but one cannot deny its quality.’
Marlowe sipped the chilled wine, admiring its bouquet and wondering why he was sitting in this fine stuffed chair embroidered with a red-and-white Tudor rose. But after some chit-chat about Benet College, Master Norgate and the finals, Walsingham got to the point.
‘Young Robert does service for me, Master Marlowe. He helps to root out Papist elements among the ranks of Benet and the other colleges. He also searches for talented men who may also serve the Crown and he has mentioned you several times in his reports over the years.’
Marlowe was stunned. He hardly knew that Cecil had even been aware of him. ‘I am honored, my lord,’ he said.
‘We live in troubled times, Master Marlowe. Since 1547 our state religion has changed three times, from the English Catholicism of Henry, to the radical Protestantism of Edward, to the radical Catholicism of Mary and now to the Protestantism of Elizabeth. The seeds of confusion among the populace have yielded many strange trees. Which is your tree?’
‘Our family has always followed the Queen’s example.’
‘Has it? Has it really?’
Marlowe’s excitement turned to misgiving. Had he fallen into a trap? ‘We have been loyal subjects.’
Walsingham put his glass down hard on the table. His elaborate ruff forced him to sit ramrod straight. ‘I know for a fact,’ he said, ‘that you are not true Protestants, though you find it convenient to ally yourself with them from time to time. I certainly know you are not Papists; you despise them utterly. Methinks you are something else.’
Marlowe stared at him, not daring to speak.
‘I’m told you excelled at the study of astronomy. You understand the stars well, do you not?’
‘I have a passable knowledge.’
‘Cecil is also an able astrologer. As am I. Neither of us, of course, rise to the level of the Queen’s astrologer, John Dee, but we know a thing or two. The stars cannot be ignored.’
‘Indeed not,’ Cecil agreed.
‘So I put to you, Marlowe, that you have a stronger allegiance to the lessons of the heavens than to the lessons of the scriptures.’
Marlowe had an urge to flee.
‘Hear me out, Marlowe,’ Walsingham said. ‘Perhaps there are men who thrive on religious conflict. Perhaps there are men who instigate conflict. Perhaps there are men who may be rather indifferent when Protestants are slain in Paris but purr like stroked cats when Catholics are butchered in York and London. Perhaps there are men who are ancient and determined enemies of the Church of Rome who live in perpetual hope of its destruction. Perhaps you are one of these men.’ Walsingham stood, prompting Cecil to spring up and Marlowe to rise more slowly. He was dripping with sweat. Then Walsingham surprised him by putting a hand on his shoulder in a reassuring manner. ‘Perhaps,’ he continued, ‘Cecil and I are also of this mind.’
‘I am without words, my lord,’ Marlowe sputtered.
‘I want you to work for me, Marlowe, even as you continue at Cambridge toward your next degree. I want everything you do to be in aid of our cause and our betterment. The Queen is not one of us but she ardently believes that Cecil and I belong to her. And to the extent that her hatred of the Papists is as acute as ours, then we are well and truly aligned. I want you to become one of my spies, to make mischief abroad in the service of the Queen but more importantly in our service. We will expect great things from you.’
Marlowe felt lightheaded. ‘I don’t know what to say.’
‘Say nothing,’ Walsingham said sharply. ‘Follow me. Deeds speak louder than words.’
Marlowe trailed Cecil and Walsingham down a long hall to an old heavy door, which Walsingham pulled open. There were stone stairs leading to a cellar.
Torches illuminated the damp walls. They walked in silence and came to another door on which Walsingham leaned heavily with his right shoulder. It creaked on its hinges, opening slowly to reveal a large room, about the size of the Great Room above. A dozen people, seven men and five women between the ages of twenty and forty, were drinking wine and lounging on plush furniture in the soft glow of candles. They all stopped what they were doing and stood.
‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ Walsingham said, ‘I present to you Master Christopher Marlowe, the young man I told you of. I wish you to make him comfortable and to demonstrate our full hospitality.’
As if on cue, they all began to astound Marlowe in a way he had not believed possible.
Women and men began stripping off layer after layer of their clothes. The rugs became strewn with doublets, peasecods and breeches, bodices, skirts and farthingales. Soon, there was pink flesh exposed everywhere and Marlowe trembled and stirred when he saw the full nakedness of twelve comely bodies facing him, the men in full tumescence.
When he turned to his host to register his incredulity he was further astonished to see that Walsingham and Cecil had themselves stripped off.
‘Show him,’ Walsingham ordered. ‘Go ahead and show him.’
In unison, all of them turned away from Marlowe and showed their backs.
Each of them, Walsingham included, had thick pink tails.
‘Good heavens,’ Marlowe gasped.
Walsingham leered at him. ‘Don’t be prudish, Marlowe. I urge you to show your natural state.’
Marlowe hesitated for a few moments, then did as he’d been commanded, first removing his shoes, then peeling off his garments until all that was left were his breeches. He let them fall to the floor.
The others broke into applause. They were showing appreciation for perhaps the longest tail in the room. Marlowe’s own.
‘Choose whomever you like,’ Walsingham said. ‘You’re among your own kind now. You can do what you like. You’re a Lemures.’
I’m a Lemures.
Marlowe slowly approached a beautiful fair-haired young man who encouraged him with a gleaming smile.
My life can now begin.
FOURTEEN
THE BASEMENT TILES of the St Andrea Hospital were a sickly yellow, making it difficult to say if they were clean or dirty. To the outside observer, the presence of a nun standing among policemen outside the morgue might have suggested a scenario of family grief and pastoral attendance.
But Elisabetta was tending her own garden, steeling herself to confront the face of death.
Micaela emerged from the morgue wearing her long white doctor’s coat. She pulled Elisabetta off to the side. ‘Are you sure you want to do this?’ she asked.
‘Yes, absolutely,’ Elisabetta answered with a pretended confidence. Then, ‘I have to.’
Micaela gave her a hug.
Inspector Leone was there, his usual irascible self, looking like he’d slept in his uniform. ‘We’re coming in too.’
Micaela took on the posture of a fighting cock about to raise its claws. ‘The Chief Pathologist said only her. You can speak to him – don’t speak to me.’
Elisabetta found it odd how she herself was comfortable with ‘old’ death but shaky with ‘fresh’ death, how skeletons and mummified remains were slotted into a cool, academic part of her brain but new corpses were relegated to a more fearful place.
Maybe it was something primeval, feeding on the fear of diseased flesh. Or perhaps, she realized, it was as simple as a childhood memory: trying to reconcile the dead body of her mother in her casket with the vibrant life force she had been.
The man was lying face up on the slab, a small towel covering his private parts – no doubt, Elisabetta thought, in respect for the modesty of a nun. His torso was riddled with angry black holes, the entrance wounds of 9mm slugs. His eyes were open but curiously no more dead-looking than they had appeared during life. His face, fixed in death, was identical to the immobile one she’d seen the night before and again years earlier.
‘It’s him,’ she whispered to her sister. ‘I’m sure it’s the man who stabbed me.’
Doctor Fiore, the Chief Pathologist,
asked whether Elisabetta was ready. She nodded and two thick-armed mortician’s assistants turned the body on its face. The exit wounds in his upper and lower back were horrific.
The towel was pulled away to reveal his well-muscled buttocks.
‘You see,’ Micaela whispered. ‘The same.’
Doctor Fiore, visibly shaken by the sight, overheard the remark. ‘Same as w – what?’
‘Just the same as I told her it would be,’ Micaela answered evasively.
It was as if the photo of the old man from Ulm had materialized incarnate.
The stubby tail hanging down to the fold of his buttocks like a dead serpent.
The numbers tattooed in three rings at the base of his spine.
Elisabetta took it in numbly. ‘I’ve seen enough,’ she said after a while.
She would have preferred a few minutes alone – perhaps a short respite in the hospital chapel – but it was not to be. There were more people in the basement hall and a heated contretemps had flared up. Zazo had arrived with Lorenzo and immediately got into an argument with Inspector Leone. Zazo started things by insisting that the convent intruder and the man on the slab were likely to be one and the same. Leone responded sarcastically that his investigation clearly demanded a higher level of proof than would satisfy the Vatican Gendarmerie.
The two of them argued and Micaela left to answer an urgent hospital page. Elisabetta was left alone with her thoughts until she felt a presence behind her.
‘Are you okay?’
It was Lorenzo, his arms folded across his front, two fingers gripping his major’s cap.
‘Yes, I’m all right,’ she said.
‘It was a terrible night for you, I’m sure,’ he said, looking down shyly at his feet.
There was something familiar about this. She saw Lorenzo but she felt Marco. The physical similarities weren’t so great. Marco was taller, darker, more handsome, at least in her mind’s eye. But here was another friend of Zazo’s, in uniform, making her feel safe just by his presence. And there was another similarity, she realized. The eyes. Both men had sympathetic eyes.
