Queen's Progress

by M. J. Trow

  ‘I have had a request …’ he glanced again at the piece of parchment folded neatly beside his plate, ‘… a summons, I suppose I should more rightly call it, from Sir Robert. It may be that he wants to congratulate me on a job well done.’

  He looked around the table and noticed that everyone was smiling except Leonard Lyttleburye, who had more reason than most to beware of the wrath of Robert Cecil. His knee sometimes still gave him gyp in cold weather.

  ‘But whatever the reason, I need to go back to London and I suggest you all do as well.’ He looked at Norfolk. ‘Sorry, Jack, that was thoughtless – I know you are not a city boy. I meant, go wherever you call home. Shall we agree to meet in …’ he looked from face to face, ‘… four days, in the Slaughtered Lamb, at eight of the clock? If anyone doesn’t turn up … well, if I don’t turn up, you can draw your own conclusions. If one of you doesn’t, I will just assume you have other fish to fry. Does that suit everyone? Nicholas?’

  Faunt inclined his head and slid out of his seat, hefting his bag in one easy movement. ‘Home for me, Kit,’ he said, settling his hat rakishly over one eye. ‘See if Mistress Faunt and all the little Faunts remember who I am.’ With a nod to all around the table, he left, flinging a coin to a serving wench who watched him go with calf eyes.

  When the door had swung to behind him, Tom asked, ‘Is there a Mistress Faunt and all the little Faunts?’

  Marlowe shrugged. ‘Who knows? I think that Master Faunt has more lives than a cat and he lives them all at one and the same time. But he’ll be there, in the Slaughtered Lamb. He won’t be able to keep away.’

  ‘I’ll be away too, Master Marlowe, if you don’t mind.’ Norfolk got up less easily than Faunt, his joints clearly giving him some pain. His thick lip was now looking very painful and his black eye belied its name, being every colour of the rainbow. ‘My family will be glad to see me, even looking like this.’ He made for the stairs to fetch his bag and left the three Londoners alone at the table.

  ‘Does four days give you enough time, Tom?’ Marlowe asked. ‘I know you’ll need to go and check on Meg and the little one.’

  ‘Or ones,’ Sledd added.

  ‘Or ones. Indeed. Or ones. If you don’t want to meet us at the inn, I can always come and find you. You’ll be at home or at the Rose?’

  ‘Same thing, really,’ Sledd said, pulling a face, but there was no concealing his delight. He had found on unpacking his bag the night before that it no longer gave off the smell of hoof glue and powder that had tied him to home. He needed to get back in the wooden O for a while. ‘If I’m not there, it isn’t because I have changed my mind, so don’t worry. You can always find me at the Rose.’

  Lyttleburye was looking a little bereft. He enjoyed working with Cecil, even though it was like putting your hand inside a wasps’ nest every day and hoping to get away unstung. It was a living; the trick was to keep on living and not join the pile of unnamed corpses in the Hounds Ditch. But he had no home but nowhere and everywhere; he knew that Cecil would expect him to arrive before Marlowe did, that went with the job at hand. But just for once … he looked beseechingly at Marlowe. ‘Could you …’ he could hardly believe he was going to ask someone to lie to Robert Cecil, but if anyone could, Kit Marlowe was that man. ‘Could you tell Sir Robert that you had already sent me on an errand?’ he asked. ‘I haven’t had a day off since …’ he cast his eyes up and muttered, counting on invisible hordes of fingers ‘… since I don’t know when. I would just like to wander for a while.’

  Marlowe felt for the man. He knew what it was like to be in thrall to the Spymaster, even though it wasn’t this particular one; Sir Robert Cecil made Sir Francis Walsingham look as undemanding as a pet rock. ‘I can do that for you, Leonard, yes. Everyone deserves a rest from time to time. Will you go to friends? Family?’ He held up his hand. ‘I don’t mean to pry; I just need to know where to find you.’

  Lyttleburye shrugged. ‘I don’t have any friends, or family,’ he said, with no trace of self-pity. ‘But I promise I’ll be at the inn in four days’ time, at eight of the clock.’

  Tom put his hand on the man’s enormous forearm. ‘Why don’t you come home with me?’ he asked. ‘See Meg and the children.’ He had decided by now that his second child had arrived and was lusty and strong; it was no good worrying with just hours to go before he found out for sure. ‘I can show you around the Rose. Have you ever seen behind the scenes in a theatre?’

  Lyttleburye’s face broke into a grimace of horror. ‘I’ve never been in a theatre at all,’ he confessed, ‘They’re the Devil’s outhouses.’

  Marlowe and Tom Sledd looked into each other’s eyes for a moment. It was indeed true, the look said; they walk among us. They both took a deep breath, but Sledd got in first. ‘No, they’re not, Leonard. They’re places of laughter and magic – and love, of a sort. Will you let me show you?’

  He pulled Lyttleburye to his feet – no mean task – and propelled him to the stairs to gather his things. He was prattling about flats, aprons and other arcane theatrical phrases before they reached the turn of the stairs and Marlowe watched them go with an almost paternal look. That was all his children settled in their journeys; now, he just needed to go and face the rough music doled out by Robert Cecil.

  The palace of Whitehall lay wreathed in the river mist that night. The guard saluted Marlowe as he flashed the Queen’s cypher at them and made for the back stairs. Lights blinked at the windows overhead and he heard the swallows settling in their nests under the eaves as they quietened their fractious, greedy young for the night to come. No one checked him beyond the courtyard. Kit Marlowe was expected.

  ‘Ah, Marlowe.’ Robert Cecil was sitting at his desk, as he usually was, his ruff laid aside, his shirt undone. ‘Good of you to call.’

  ‘Sir Robert.’ Marlowe half bowed. There were the remains of a meal on a plate next to a pile of correspondence and a bottle of claret glowing in the candlelight.

  ‘You know my cousin, Francis Bacon?’

  ‘By reputation,’ Marlowe said. ‘Sir Francis.’

  ‘Christopher Marlowe, by God,’ Bacon said. ‘Your reputation far exceeds mine, sir. It’s an honour.’ The men shook hands. Marlowe knew that this man had a fearsome reputation as a scholar and a lawyer of some eminence. He worked from Gray’s Inn and was a Member of Parliament for Liverpool, a scruffy little port somewhere in the north-west. Modest man though Bacon was, he let everybody know that his aims in life were to uncover the truth, to serve his country and to serve his church. For the life of him, Marlowe could not see how the first and third of those aims were compatible with each other. But then, he was only a Master of Arts from Cambridge University and the foremost playwright in England; what did he know?

  ‘It’s not going well, Marlowe, is it?’ Cecil tapped the pile of correspondence.

  ‘Well, I’ll leave you both to it, shall I?’ Bacon got up and was making for the door.

  ‘No, cousin. We all serve the same Queen here. Master Marlowe won’t be with us long.’

  ‘Do you drink smoke, Master Marlowe?’ Bacon was wrestling with a pipe and a tobacco purse.

  ‘I doubt I’ll be here long enough,’ Marlowe smiled.

  ‘I won’t beat about the bush,’ Cecil would not be deflected. ‘Tell me about Fareham. The Middlehams.’

  Marlowe had not been invited to sit, so he stood, arms folded, eyes fixed on the Queen’s imp with that imperturbable stare. ‘A man died,’ he said. ‘The grandfather of the family, Sir Walter Middleham.’ He knew that Cecil knew all this already but the imp just wanted to hear him say it.

  ‘When you say “died” …?’ Cecil wanted more.

  Marlowe decided to be obtuse. ‘I’m sorry, Sir Robert, Sir Francis,’ he said, nodding to each man. ‘Was that too blunt? Would you prefer me to say “passed away”?’

  Cecil’s eyebrow and sneer said it for him.

  ‘Well, not that then. How about “murdered”?’

  ‘Person or persons
unknown?’ the Spymaster nodded.

  ‘Ah, those words,’ Bacon breathed, his face lost in a cloud of smoke. ‘Frustrating, aren’t they? One day, we’ll be able to find a murderer without resorting to corpses that bleed in their presence. One day … one day …’

  ‘I look forward to it,’ Marlowe said. ‘But until then—’

  ‘Until then,’ Cecil finished the sentence for him, ‘your report said that someone threw him off his own battlements.’

  ‘It certainly looked that way,’ Marlowe nodded.

  ‘Then came Cowdray,’ Cecil sighed. ‘The Montagues.’

  ‘The knight of ancient armour,’ Marlowe remembered all too clearly.

  ‘Ancient armour?’ Bacon echoed, reaching for his goblet.

  ‘Gothic, I’d say,’ Marlowe said. ‘Augsburg, unless I miss my guess.’

  ‘What happened?’ Bacon asked.

  ‘He came out of nowhere,’ Marlowe told him. ‘A knight incognito, with no device on his shield and no tabard. He challenged the heir of the Montagues.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Nearly killed him.’

  ‘My God!’ Bacon was aghast. ‘Not a blunted lance, then?’

  ‘Sharp as a witchfinder’s bodkin, Sir Francis.’

  ‘One murder,’ Cecil recapped. ‘One attempted murder. Petworth – what happened there, Marlowe?’

  ‘Another murder, Sir Robert,’ the projectioner told him. ‘No doubt this time. No tragic accident, no wandering soldier of fortune seeking the bubble reputation. Just a pistol at point-blank range.’

  ‘But,’ and Cecil’s smile was a basilisk’s, ‘at Chichester, merely a rebellion.’

  ‘Merely,’ Marlowe agreed.

  ‘In which the bishop of the benighted place could have been torn limb from limb. Do you see a pattern here, Marlowe?’

  ‘I do, Sir Robert,’ the playwright told him, ‘but it’s more intricate than a knot garden. Some sort of maze.’

  ‘None of which bodes well for the Queen’s Progress,’ Cecil snapped. ‘You’ve failed, Marlowe.’

  ‘Sir Robert,’ the playwright could see the end of his tether getting too close for comfort. ‘Are you aware that in every place except Chichester, there is a strong Catholic tendency? The Middlehams, the Browns, the Earl of Northumberland, they’re all Papists.’

  ‘Of course they are,’ Cecil roared. ‘I didn’t get where I am today by not knowing which way my God’s wind blows. Why do you think I sent you?’

  ‘I have no idea,’ Marlowe snapped back, ‘but it would have been useful to know that before I put foot to stirrup, wouldn’t it?’

  Cecil was suddenly on his feet, for all the difference that made, and instantly sat down again, regretting the move. ‘We’ve vetted these families for years, my father and I,’ he said, staring Marlowe down. ‘We know exactly how far to trust them. There’s something else. Some other threat to Her Majesty that I expected you to uncover. And you haven’t. These …’ he snatched up the sheaf of letters on his table, ‘are from all those up whose nostrils you have so assiduously climbed over the last few weeks. Blanche Middleham and her brothers,’ he glanced down at the first one, ‘“Heartbroken that Her Majesty will not be coming” … Anthony Browne, “The incident at the mock tournament can have no bearing on the Queen’s visit” … Henry Percy, “I can assure Her Majesty of my undying loyalty” … the Bishop of Chichester, “All is well and we look forward to receiving Her Majesty to pray under God’s roof after all” …’ Cecil threw the letters down and they skidded this way and that on the polished table. ‘A lot of disappointed people, Marlowe,’ he hissed. ‘And all of them, all of them, speak of the high-handed arbitrary decision by the visiting Master of Revels to cancel the Queen. These were sent to Edmund Tilney, of course, but I had them intercepted.’ He shrugged one shoulder and glanced at his cousin. ‘I have everything intercepted, naturally.’

  ‘Naturally,’ Bacon replied, with a nod.

  Marlowe stepped forward. ‘When it comes to the Queen’s safety, Sir Robert, surely, I can be as high-handed as it takes?’

  ‘No, Marlowe!’ Cecil was shrieking now, his face purple, his large eyes watering. ‘No, you can’t. I’m taking it out of your hands. But not until,’ he threw his hand across the letters, ‘you have personally made amends to these good people. They are our people, Marlowe, at least Francis’s and mine. How you make amends is your problem; but it had better work and it had better cost Her Majesty’s government nothing. Do I make myself clear?’

  ‘Perfectly, Sir Robert,’ Marlowe said, hoping as he spoke that he sounded like a man who knew exactly what his next move would be.

  ‘I will let you keep Lyttleburye for one more week; I am not an unreasonable man, I hope.’ Again, he looked to his cousin for affirmation and got a nod and a smile. ‘Now, get out. And, before you go,’ Cecil paused for maximum affect, ‘you will leave Her Majesty’s cypher on this table. Now.’

  Marlowe ferreted in his purse and threw the silver dragon onto the oak.

  Francis Bacon was on his feet. ‘Master Marlowe,’ he smiled, ‘I’ll see you to the courtyard. I have a question about Tamburlaine.’

  Marlowe half bowed to Cecil and spun on his heel, the man’s cousin in his wake. ‘Tamburlaine,’ he said, trying to keep his temper as they marched along the passageway.

  ‘Tamburlaine be buggered,’ Bacon murmured. ‘In here,’ and he slipped through a door into a tiny anteroom. ‘You’ll have to forgive Robyn. He’s new to the job. A bit on his dignity. And when every other street urchin is taller than you, well, it’s a bit of a shit, I suppose.’

  ‘We all have our problems, Sir Francis,’ Marlowe was in no mood to see the other man’s point of view.

  ‘Yes, and yours is a knight in ancient armour.’

  Marlowe looked at him. ‘Do you know anything about that?’

  Bacon had brought his pipe with him and he tapped out the ash onto the floor. ‘As a matter of fact … But, no, it’s just a coincidence.’

  ‘What is?’ Marlowe waited.

  ‘No,’ Bacon said, reaching for the latch. ‘Forget it.’

  ‘Sir Francis,’ Marlowe blocked the man’s exit. ‘I am currently chasing two murderers, perhaps a third. The Queen’s life is at stake, for all your cousin believes that not offending people takes precedence over that.’

  ‘Very well,’ Bacon relented. ‘It’s just that I can’t see any actual connection. It’s something I was reading the other day. Thomas More.’

  ‘Tut, tut, Sir Francis,’ Marlowe shook his head, ‘Catholic literature?’ He raised an eyebrow.

  ‘I know, I know,’ Bacon was flustered. ‘But you and I, Marlowe, are men of the world. You know your Machiavelli, banned by both our universities though he is. It’s my guess you’ve read Giordano Bruno and many other political texts of a heretical nature. We both know that not everything that is printed in the English College is nonsense.’

  Marlowe had been to the English College, the Scorpion’s nest as the Puritans called it. He knew that Bacon was right. ‘So?’ he said.

  ‘Thomas More writes of a disaffected lord, back in the days of the wars of York and Lancaster, a man who was badly wounded at the battle of Stoke.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘He was buried in his armour, sitting at his table as though waiting for news when he would be needed again; when the Yorkist cause would have need of him. His tomb, they say, is in a vault in his castle. And I happen to know that that vault was broken into recently and the tomb disturbed.’

  ‘I don’t see …’ Marlowe frowned.

  ‘Neither do I,’ Bacon shrugged. ‘But, apparently, only one item was taken – the Lord’s family crest, a silver wolf-dog.’

  ‘A silver …’ The hairs on the back of Marlowe’s neck began to crawl. ‘Who was this disaffected lord?’

  ‘Oh, didn’t I tell you?’ Bacon asked. ‘My namesake, Francis. Francis, Viscount Lovell.’

  Tom Sledd prided himself on being a down-to-earth sort of man, not a
flibbertigibbet like all the theatre crowd; even the most humble of the walking gentlemen had a tendency to speak louder than the typical man along Bankside, would throw his arms about and be extravagantly excited about the least thing. But not Tom Sledd; oh no, not the stage manager of the Rose. Leonard Lyttleburye considered Sledd to be as fey as it was possible to be and not actually fly away on gossamer wings; but Leonard Lyttleburye was made of the clay of England, he didn’t believe in extravagant gestures. He hardly recognized a muttered civility. And the dour Puritanism of Geneva was in his blood.

  So they were both overcome by the emotion that swept over them when they walked into the little scullery at the back of the house that Tom and Meg Sledd called home. The hot summer’s day had precluded the need for a fire, so all the cooking was being done outside in the washhouse and Meg had ensconced herself in the oak settle beside the empty grate. At her feet, a flaxen-haired child still in hanging sleeves was amusing itself by gently teasing the cat. On her lap, wrapped in old lace handed down by her family for generations, lay a baby, so new that it was still damp, with skin like a rose petal that has unfurled itself into the morning dew just seconds before. Its eyes were closed and its nose was snub, its cheeks tempted the stroking finger as they framed its rosebud lips, making soft sucking motions with just the hint of a questing tongue showing between. The men stopped dead in the doorway. Meg looked up and smiled hello; she didn’t have the strength to do much more. Then, when the silence went on, she raised the baby up to its father.

  ‘Meet your son, Master Sledd,’ she said, grinning. ‘And introduce him to your friend, do.’

  ‘I … My son?’

  ‘Yes!’ And this time, she had a laugh in her throat. ‘Yes, he arrived this morning. At cockcrow. A fine boy. Here. Take him.’

  Sledd wiped his hands on the sides of his coat and stepped across the uneven flags of the floor. The little one at her mother’s feet left the cat and toddled over to grasp her father’s leg. He took his son gently, cradling his head as he had learned when his daughter had burst into his life to change everything. With one hand on her curly head, and his other arm about his new child, he bent his head and cried.