by Glenn Cooper
Babington shuffled off with the foreboding of a man heading to the gallows. When he returned with a full jug Marlowe said, ‘I will make as much haste as I am able. Poley will need to get this letter to the brewer in Chiswick tonight for I believe tomorrow is the day the next keg goes to Mary. Then we need only await the reply of the dear lady.’
Babington drank two tankards in quick succession. He had no such desire to keep a clear head.
The Palace of Whitehall was a city unto itself. It surpassed the Vatican and Versailles in sheer size and pomp and it was no small task to navigate among 1,500 rooms. To find one’s destination required prior knowledge or the good graces of a friendly gentleman or lady to take you by the hand and lead you through the labyrinth of offices and private residences.
By now Marlowe well knew his way around the palace and eagerly presented himself at Walsingham’s privy chamber, his pulse racing, his face triumphant. Walsingham’s private secretary greeted him cordially and announced his arrival.
Walsingham was in conference with Robert Poley, severe as always with a sun-beaten face and his greasy black hair pulled into a knot. In this state one would take him for a brigand or a soldier, not a gentleman who had matriculated from Cambridge.
The first words Marlowe spoke to them were ‘I have it!’
Walsingham looked down his narrow nose. ‘Let me see.’
Marlowe opened his writing case and proudly slid the parchments across the desk. Walsingham plucked them up like a hawk swooping on a vole. While he pored over them, Marlowe stood, pinching white hairs from one of Mrs Bull’s cats off his doublet.
‘This is good, very good,’ Walsingham said. ‘I’ll have the cipher sent to the brewer immediately. Mary possesses the new code?’
‘She has it,’ Poley said. ‘It was in her last keg. She will safely believe that no others could have deciphered it.’
‘May she answer soon and reply forcefully,’ Walsingham cried. ‘Once we’ve intercepted her letter we’ll have her fucking Catholic head, by the stars!’
‘I’d like to be there when it happens,’ Marlowe said, imagining the bloody denouement.
‘I’ll see to it that you are. And you’ll be there to see Babington with his insides out, howling to his God. And the other plotters too. Then the serious game will begin. The Pope’s lot will want their revenge for Mary’s downfall. You know what that will mean?’
‘A war, I should think,’ Marlowe said.
‘Not one war, many. Europe ablaze, and in due course the world. And ourselves as the only clear winners. Taking pleasure in the growing piles of Catholic corpses. Seizing land and commerce from all parties. Swelling our coffers.’
Marlowe nodded, still standing.
‘Sit,’ Walsingham said. ‘Have some wine. You’ve done well. You always do well. Whatever task we’ve given him, be it in Rheims or London, Paris or Cambridge, he’s handled it with dispatch, wouldn’t you say, Poley?’
Poley stiffly raised his glass. ‘Yes, he’s quite the marvel.’
‘Thank you, my lord,’ Marlowe said. ‘I seek only your pleasure and the furtherance of our cause. But to continue to do so I will need a letter from the Privy Council to the Master’s of the University excusing my absences. They aim to deny me my Masters for they believe that I go to France to mingle with and encourage the Papists.’
‘That’s because you are a convincing actor,’ Walsingham said. ‘Poley, give him the letter we’ve prepared.’
Marlowe read it in gratitude. It was perfect. Short and authoritative, leaving no doubt that Marlowe had been serving abroad in the service of Her Majesty. ‘That will do nicely.’
Walsingham took back the document and began to heat some wax to affix the Privy Council seal. While he was fussing with the wax and candle he said, ‘Let me ask you something, Marlowe. I am most curious to know why you seek to engage in the frivolous business of writing plays. I hear the Admiral’s Men will perform one of your works before long. How does this most effectively further our cause? I can set a brilliant mind such as yours to a hundred tasks that will credit the Lemures. How can this be a higher priority?’
Marlowe poured himself a goblet of the Secretary’s wine and tasted it. It was excellent, far better than his own usual swill. ‘Have you ever been to the theater, my lord?’
Walsingham nodded disdainfully. ‘I do so only because the Queen is keen on such things and oft requires her Privy Council to attend her. What about you, Poley? Are you a theater man?’
Poley snorted. ‘I’d rather spend my evenings with a whore.’
‘Yes, I’ve heard of the trail of destruction you leave when you go a-whoring.’
‘I can’t very well leave them alive once they’ve seen my arse.’
‘Hardly,’ Walsingham chuckled.
Marlowe leaned forward, ignoring Poley. ‘So, my lord, you’ve seen then the effects that plays have on the audience. How they stir emotions like a cooking ladle stirs stew. How they evoke all manner of passions – mirth, rage, ardor, fear – and make those in attendance think as one. I will use my plays, my lord, to stir discord, to start fires in men’s hearts, to set Protestants against our great enemy, the Catholics. With my plays I can make mischief on a grand scale. And I am good at it. No, more than good.’
Walsingham walked slowly around his desk and sat beside Marlowe. He took some wine and began to laugh. ‘I cannot disagree with your ideas, Marlowe, or the confident state of your mind. It is not our usual way but there was one of us, a very great one, a long time ago, who fancied himself an artist. Do you know of whom I speak?’
‘Was it Nero?’
‘Yes, indeed. He was, it is said, one of the great performers of his age. But you know what happened to him? He went mad. All his gains came to dust. You won’t go mad, will you, Marlowe?’
‘I would hope to remain sane.’
‘That’s good. If you were not to do so, I might have dark words to impart to Mister Poley.’
Summer passed and then the autumn. The new year came and, with it, frost on the fields and ice on the ponds. And in February, with the winter winds howling across Northamptonshire, Marlowe arrived by coach at Fotheringay Castle.
The stabbing air couldn’t chill his hot excitement. These had been heady months. From the day he’d drafted Babington’s letter in Mrs Bull’s green garden to this moment when the massive doors of Fotheringay were cast open for him, he’d felt as though he was living his destiny. His bloodlines and his intellect had always given him a sense of mightiness but the actual wielding of real power was truly intoxicating.
After Walsingham intercepted Mary’s reply to Babington he quickly rolled up the plotters. Marlowe was there at St Giles in the Fields on the late-September day when Babington’s confused stare found him in the crowd moments before the unfortunate young man was hoisted by the neck onto the scaffold and then strapped to a table, very much alive. His executioner used a none-too-sharp knife to slice open Babington’s flat belly. The brute in his bloody butcher’s smock slowly roasted Babington’s entrails and his severed penis as his screams finally faded to silence and his eyes went mercifully dull. Some of the crowd that day were sickened by the ordeal. But not Marlowe.
The trial of Mary followed and though it was conducted with all the proper formalities that great matters of state required, the outcome was never in doubt. The hour of her execution inside the Great Hall of Fotheringay had come, the same chamber where her trial had been held.
Marlowe, for obvious reasons a keen student of theater, marveled at this particular stage. A black-draped platform, five feet high, twelve feet wide, had been erected beside a log fire which blazed in the huge fireplace. Mary stood between two soldiers, her ladies weeping behind her. The hooded executioner stood, hands clasped across his white apron, his ax standing against the scaffold rail.
As Mary prayed in Latin and wept, Marlowe pushed his way through the crowd to be near the stage. When the time came for her to disrobe, she managed to say, ‘Never b
efore have I had such grooms to make me ready nor ever have I put off my clothes for such a company.’
The audience gasped at her petticoats: blood-red satin, the colors of her Church, the colors of martyrdom.
Marlowe held his breath as the executioner raised his ax high over his head and brought it down with all his might.
Nonetheless, the blow was clumsy. It missed its mark, hit the knot of Mary’s blindfold and glanced off, cutting deeply into the back of her skull. The Scottish Queen made a small squeaking noise but stayed upon the block, still. The second blow found a better mark and the blood gushed as it should, but even that blow failed to completely sever head from body. The executioner was forced into a crouch, whereupon he used his ax like a knife to cut through the last bits of gristle.
He grasped her head by its pinned cap, rose and held it high. But as he shouted his practiced line – ‘God save the Queen!’ – her head fell from his grip and he was left holding the cap and an auburn wig.
It had been known only to herself and her ladies but Mary had gone almost completely bald. Her bloody head rolled off the scaffold and landed at Marlowe’s feet.
He watched her mouth open and close as if she were trying to kiss his boot, and with each deathly movement he felt his tail twitching with life.
I am a Lemures, and I have helped kill the Catholic Queen.
EIGHTEEN
MICHELANGELO’S SISTINE CHAPEL WAS not created for hordes of tourists craning their necks and strobing the chamber with their digital flashes.
It was created for this.
Sealed and empty, it was grandly silent and expectant, evenly and naturally lit from the high windows which lined the chapel from their position just below the painted ceiling.
Rows of brown-velvet-topped tables were carefully laid out on either side of the chapel, facing each other, each table with a simple white card bearing a cardinal’s name.
There was a sound of an ancient key in an ancient lock and a heavy door groaned open. Then a sound of sniffing and claws scratching on the mosaic floor.
The Alsatian dog strained at its leash, its ears erect and eager, its tail wagging with purpose. Its handler from the security contractor Gruppo BRM let it do its job. It went straight for the nearest table, sniffed at the floor-length velvet drape and poked its large black and brown head underneath.
The dog resurfaced, its tail in the same state of readiness. It strained for the next table down the line.
Hackel motioned to his man, Glauser, who seemed overjoyed that he’d been given a plain-clothes assignment for the Conclave, a black suit cut with enough room to conceal a modified Heckler & Koch submachine gun. ‘Bring in the electronics team to start sweeping behind the dog.’
Glauser nodded and went to fetch the bug sweepers.
When they were done with the chapel, the security detail proceeded en masse to the small adjoining rooms including the Room of Tears – where the new Pope would briefly contemplate his fate alone – the Vestments Room and on down to the basement rooms where they completed the sweep.
In the courtyard behind the chapel, Hackel watched the Gruppo BRM people packing up their gear and loading the dog into a van. Glauser approached him and said, ‘From this point on, I’ll double the guard and maintain the highest level of sterility.’
Hackel pointed a finger at him and growled, ‘You make sure of that.’
Elisabetta had the apartment to herself. She’d returned there after mass at Santa Maria in Trastevere and the day stretched out oddly in front of her. She wasn’t at all used to unstructured time but she wasn’t going to turn on the television, was she?
First she spent an hour on her father’s computer researching Lumbubashi and the Republic of Congo. Such a poor country, she thought. So many needs. But despite the poverty, the children on the Order’s website seemed so cheerful and fresh-faced. That, at least, buoyed her spirits.
She sighed and rose. The light streaming through the windows accentuated the dust on the furniture. Unlike her father’s cleaning lady, she could move his books and papers with impunity and dust and polish under surfaces that hadn’t been tended for years.
Elisabetta went to her bedroom, slipped off her shoes and then her robes. The drawers of her old dresser were swollen with humidity and it took several determined tugs to open them. She hadn’t looked at her clothes in years and the sight of her old jeans and sweaters brought back a torrent of memories. She reached for a faded pair of Levis she’d bought on a school trip to New York and her fingertips brushed something underneath them.
It was a velvet box.
She sat back on her bed, her chest shuddering, trying to suppress tears. The box was on her bare knees. She opened the lid. The sunlight caught Marco’s pendant and bounced wildly off its faceted surface. It was as pretty and sparkly as the day she’d first put it on.
It was a hot night. Elisabetta’s window was wide open but the air was hardly moving.
Marco put his forefinger onto the heart-shaped pendant, pressing it lightly against the top of her breast. Her skin was glistening and she was breathing heavily. They were bathed in candlelight.
‘Do you still like it?’ he asked.
‘Of course I do. Don’t you notice I never take it off?’
‘I have noticed. Even when you make love.’
‘With the other boys, I take it off,’ she said, poking him in the ribs.
He pouted. ‘Ah, very nice.’
Elisabetta kissed his cheek, then ran her tongue playfully over Marco’s stubble. He tasted salty. ‘Don’t worry. You’re the only one.’
He sat up beside her in the bed, pulled his knees against his chest and suddenly said. ‘We’re going to get married, aren’t we?’
She sat up too and looked at him quizzically. ‘That’s not a proposal, is it?’
Marco shrugged. ‘It’s just a question. I mean, I think I know the answer, I just want to make sure you know it too.’
He was like a man-child that night. So big and potent, but at the same time so vulnerable and insecure. ‘Who else would I marry?’ Elisabetta placed her palm on his naked back and moved it slowly down over his spine until she got to the hollow at the small of his back. It was smooth and strong and, for a reason she didn’t understand, was her favorite spot on his body.
Elisabetta put the velvet box back into the drawer, as carefully as if she were handling a saint’s relic. She pulled on the old Levis – which still fit – and then a musty sweatshirt.
As she cleaned the apartment, she tried not to think about Marco. She had always been good at blotting out thoughts of him but today the only thing with any chance of accomplishing that was Africa.
The news from Sister Marilena had shaken her deeply. She’d spent the night in denial, suppressing a sense of indignation, even anger. Who was playing with her life, pulling strings as if she were a marionette? Why was she being ripped from her convent and her students, indeed from the very membrane of her life?
But as she’d prayed at Mass that morning her attitude had begun to shift and her mood had lightened. How arrogant and self-important of her to question her fate! Not only was she in God’s hands but it dawned on her that the Congo was His gift. It was a chance, Elisabetta realized, to shed the heavy load she’d been forced to carry. She could leave behind the skeletons and the men with tails and their dark little tattoos and get back to her true calling, the service of God and the education of His children. The convent school in Lumbubashi was far away and pure and good and she would be restored there. Of course she would miss her family and her community of Sisters but her sacrifice was nothing compared to the sacrifice that Christ had made. Christ’s love would sustain her in a foreign land and the happy faces of the little children called to her from the pages of Lumbubashi’s website.
The sitting room, kitchen, dining room, hall and guest lavatory were gleaming and smelled of fresh cleaning products. She’d do the bedrooms next, starting with her own and doing her father’s last. Elisabe
tta pushed the vacuum cleaner into her bedroom, plugged it in and began to run it over the carpet when the Faustus book and Bruno Ottinger’s envelope caught her eye. She turned off the machine and sat at her desk, rereading the inscription from this mysterious K to Ottinger.
She sighed at her weakness. She couldn’t let go.
I’m not leaving for six days, she thought. What would it matter if I spent some of my time before I got on the plane doing more than cleaning?
Armed with a cup of coffee and a phone number from the University of Ulm web page, Elisabetta sat in her father’s kitchen cradling a telephone under her chin. She talked her way past an imperious secretary and was soon on the line with the Dean of the Faculty of Engineering Sciences, Daniel Friedrich.
Dean Friedrich listened quietly to Elisabetta’s request for information about Bruno Ottinger but as soon as she spoke she knew he couldn’t be helpful. He was relatively new at the University and although he had a vague knowledge that Ottinger had been in the department years earlier, he had no personal knowledge of the man. He also sounded as if he had more important things to attend to.
‘Are there any older faculty members who might remember him?’ she asked.
‘Maybe Hermann Straub,’ the Dean said irritably. ‘He’s been here forever.’
‘Might I speak with him?’
‘Tell you what,’ Friedrich snapped. ‘Call back and leave your number with my secretary. She’ll see if Straub wants to contact you. That’s the best I can do.’
Elisabetta had already pulled Straub’s office number from the website and she rang it the instant the line went dead. An older-sounding man answered formally in German but switched to serviceable English when she asked if he spoke English or Italian.
Straub was instantly charming and, she imagined from his syrupy tone, something of an aging ladies’ man. She didn’t risk putting him off by mentioning she was a nun.
