Silent Court

by M. J. Trow

The man did have a boat. He often took it out into the shallows of the Hook, catching herring. But cross to England? Never. It wasn’t built for that and he wouldn’t do it for ready money. What he would do it for was Kit Marlowe, especially when the man was pricking his epiglottis with the tip of his dagger. But he wouldn’t be held responsible – he’d known seas like mountains at this time of year and then there were the sea beggars.

  ‘Mother of God!’ the man crossed himself as he saw their oars slide out of the mist like a ghost ship. ‘Waterguizen!’

  ‘What?’ Marlowe wasn’t sure he had heard right.

  ‘Sea beggars.’ The man pointed, a terrified look on his face. ‘See, the wallet and the pot. I told you. I warned you. But you wouldn’t listen, no, not you as would.’

  The strangest craft Marlowe had ever seen was heading on a course straight for them. It was a galliass, but small and low in the water, its single sail a livid scarlet in the grey morning and it rattled with rows of copper pots bumping and clanging along its hull. At its prow stood a man in a Spanish morion and breastplate roaring commands in northern Dutch, which Marlowe didn’t understand at all.

  ‘What does he want?’ the Englishman asked the Dutchman, who was already hauling in his sail with both hands.

  ‘Us!’ the man screamed at him. ‘Are you simple or something?’

  ‘Can’t we outrun him?’

  The Dutchman stopped in his frantic work in disbelief and pointed to the galliass. ‘You don’t know much about the sea, do you, mate?’ he snarled. ‘How many oars do you count?’

  ‘Er . . . fifteen.’ Marlowe peered through the mist.

  ‘That’s just on the one side,’ the fisherman said. ‘So make that thirty. Thirty oarsmen against me. Oh, and you, I suppose, for all the good you are.’ He spat over the side with all the contempt he could muster.

  ‘We’ve got the wind,’ Marlowe said, grasping at straws. He had always been strictly land-based. Although his mother came from Dover, his father was a cobbler, not a noticeably seagoing profession.

  ‘So have they,’ the fisherman told him. ‘See that sail? That big red thing? It’s like this one, isn’t it? Only bigger.’ He was screaming at Marlowe now and waving a piece of white cloth frantically.

  As the galliass came alongside, it nudged the little fishing boat amidships and both its owner and Marlowe were sent sprawling in the bilge water sloshing around in the keel. When they got to their feet again, a dozen arquebuses were trained on them.

  The fisherman scrambled upright then dropped to his knees. ‘He made me do it, sir,’ he gabbled in a northern dialect Marlowe couldn’t follow. ‘This mad Englishman. I wouldn’t have sailed out of my own accord, not in your waters. Not today.’

  The man at the helm of the pirate looked at Marlowe, an odd expression on his face. Then he nodded at someone to his left and a metal pot hissed through the air as the grappling irons held the fishing boat fast. It caught Marlowe a nice one on the side of the head and he dropped to the deck like a stone.

  Even when his eyes opened, Kit Marlowe’s world was rocking. He was on a hard wooden bed, shackles at his wrists. His sword, dagger and doublet had gone and something was shining in his vision. At first he couldn’t make it out. It was like a star, bright in the firmament, a jewel against a field of dark velvet. Then, when he could focus, he realized it was a silver crescent with a cruel, smiling face in the curve. And around the rim ran the legend ‘en Despit de La Mes’.

  ‘It means “despite the Mass”,’ a voice told him in broken English. ‘It’s a sort of . . . letter of introduction, I suppose you’d say.’

  ‘Introduction to what?’ Marlowe asked, keeping to English to see how far the holder of the talisman could follow him. The man holding the crescent on the point of Marlowe’s dagger had been at the bow of the galliass . . . how long before?

  ‘The beggars of the sea.’ The man half bowed, smiling. ‘I am Adam van Haren, by the way.’ And he held out a hand.

  Marlowe rattled his chains to remind the pirate that he was hardly in a position to reciprocate.

  ‘I am sorry about those,’ Van Haren chuckled. ‘These days, you can’t be too careful.’

  ‘Nice doublet,’ Marlowe murmured, recognizing the good Flemish leather that used to be his.

  ‘Well, that’s why I had you hit with that pot,’ van Haren explained. ‘I could have shot you but I didn’t want to risk damaging the leather. Apart from the hole, blood is such a difficult stain to get out. Where did you get it?’ Without taking his eyes of Marlowe, he stroked the doublet appreciatively. ‘It is the very best quality, and I think you can probably tell that I am a man who can tell a good thing when he sees it.’

  ‘Clearly you are a man of taste and discernment,’ Marlowe said, bitterly. ‘I got it from the Statholder, the Prince of Nassau.’

  There was a silence, then van Haren roared with laughter. ‘Oh, that’s good,’ he said, slipping the crescent into a purse on his hip. ‘That’s very good.’ He suddenly frowned and peered more closely at his prisoner. ‘You know,’ he said quietly, ‘I’ve been here for quite a while, looking at you.’

  ‘Oh?’ Marlowe raised an eyebrow. He’d heard much of the sea beggars during his time in this country, but nothing like that.

  ‘Your name wouldn’t be Arthur, would it, by any chance?’

  ‘Not by any chance,’ said Marlowe; then, ‘Do you mean surname or God-given name?’

  The Dutchman’s eyelid flickered for a moment while he translated in his head. ‘Surname,’ he said.

  ‘No,’ said the prisoner. ‘My name is Marlowe.’

  ‘Ah,’ said the captain of the sea beggars, looking disappointed.

  ‘But my mother was an Arthur,’ Marlowe went on. ‘From Dover.’

  ‘I knew it!’ van Haren thumped his knee in his enthusiasm. ‘Katherine, yes?’

  Marlowe nodded.

  ‘Lovely girl. You’ve got her eyes and mouth.’

  ‘Have I?’ said Marlowe. ‘I’d better give them back.’

  ‘Give them . . .’ and van Haren guffawed again. ‘Ah, your English sense of humour, yes? Very good, very good. What have you to do with the Statholder?’

  ‘That’s my business,’ Marlowe told him. ‘What had you to do with my mother?’

  Van Haren paused, a smile playing around his lips. ‘It was all a long time ago,’ he said softly, ‘and perhaps there are some things a young man should not know about his mother. How old are you, Master Marlowe?’

  ‘I am twenty,’ Marlowe said.

  Van Haren seemed to be doing a little mental arithmetic. ‘Does your mother live?’ he asked, suddenly serious.

  ‘She does,’ Marlowe said.

  ‘Good.’ The sea beggar smiled. ‘I am happy. So –’ he stood up and began to prowl the cramped space under his own deck – ‘William the Silent?’

  ‘My mother,’ Marlowe continued.

  Van Haren paused and looked at him. ‘A long time ago, I came to Dover,’ he said. ‘You know, we sea beggars have a base there?’

  ‘I didn’t know,’ Marlowe admitted.

  ‘An arrangement with your Queen Elizabeth,’ the pirate said. ‘I don’t understand politics.’

  ‘No,’ Marlowe said, ‘but you do understand robbery on the Queen’s seas.’

  ‘The Statholder’s seas!’ The sea beggar was suddenly, defiantly Dutch.

  It was Marlowe’s turn to pause. ‘I believe we are both deluding ourselves, Captain van Haren,’ he said. ‘They are actually Philip of Spain’s seas.’

  Van Haren spat on to the timbers at his feet. ‘Spaniards,’ he snarled.

  ‘You don’t object to wearing their armour,’ Marlowe observed. ‘Up on deck . . .’

  ‘Let’s just say the gentleman who owned it no longer had need of it.’ Van Haren smiled. ‘Not after . . . Well, these things happen in war.’

  ‘My mother,’ Marlowe said, trying to keep his voice level.

  ‘A fling,’ the captain said dismissively. ‘Oh,
there was a time. Your mother . . . those eyes, those lips, those breasts . . .’ He caught the look on Marlowe’s face and changed tack. ‘She had a lovely personality. I like to think there was something between us. Some spark. I think she shed a tear when I left.’

  ‘You left her?’ Marlowe wanted to know.

  The pirate muttered something in Dutch as if tasting the words. ‘No, not put like that. It sounds different in my language. We were both very young, with our lives before us. Tell me, er . . . your father?’

  ‘A tanner and bootmaker,’ Marlowe told him.

  Van Haren shook his head sadly. Katherine Arthur could so easily have been a sea beggar’s wife instead. Or at least, a sea beggar’s wife in Dover – there were many other ports in the world, after all.

  ‘They are very happy,’ Marlowe said.

  ‘I’m glad,’ said his captor after a while. ‘Now, the Statholder.’

  And Marlowe told the man who could have been his father the story of a little part of his life.

  The proctors, Lomas and Darryl, stood at each side of the gateway to Corpus Christi as the Buttery bell sounded for luncheon. Their hands were clasped in front of them and their faces were grim as they counted the scholars hurtling in from various errands in the town. They checked their passes one by one, familiar with forgeries as they were. They could recognize a fake Lyler or a fraudulent Harvey at twenty paces and it took an ingenious scholar indeed to get one over on them. It would take someone of the mettle of Kit Marlowe and Kit Marlowe was a graduate now, infuriatingly beyond their grasp.

  Many was the time the roisterer had slipped in through St Bene’t’s sleeping churchyard or rung the fire bell or used the old ghost of Corpus ploy; though they’d die rather than admit it, he got them every time.

  They were just about to call it a day and grab their own midday fare when a lady and her servant swept along the cobbles of Trumpington Street towards them. Females in the colleges were a rarity and this one was beautiful, with a cloak and hood of rich burgundy and a French cap crowning her high forehead.

  Lomas, as the senior man, held up his hand. ‘Good afternoon, madam,’ he said. ‘May I help you?’

  She looked him up and down. He was an oaf of a man, thickset and bull-necked. His colleague looked like a weasel. But they both wore the pelican and lily badges of the college, so she knew she had to deal with them. ‘Is this Corpus Christi?’ she asked.

  ‘It is, madam,’ Lomas told her. ‘Do you have business here?’

  ‘Proctor Lomas.’ Professor Johns was suddenly at the man’s elbow and Lomas doffed his cap. ‘I think you can leave this to me.’ He smiled, removed his cap and turned to the lady. ‘Madam.’ He bowed. ‘I am Michael Johns, Professor of Rhetoric at this college. May I be of assistance?’

  ‘I am Catherine Shelley.’ She curtsied to him. ‘I was looking for . . .’

  Johns held a finger to his lips. ‘Lomas,’ he said, ‘Mistress Shelley and I will be in the library. Madam, will you take some luncheon?’

  ‘That is very kind, sir,’ she said. ‘My man . . .’ She indicated the silent servant behind her.

  ‘. . . is welcome to join us,’ Johns said. ‘Luncheon for three, Lomas. My Buttery account will cover it. Will you take some college wine, madam? I fear it will not be what you are used to.’

  ‘I have become used to Yorkshire ale, sir, in recent weeks. Thank you.’

  Johns led the way from Golden Gate across the court with its Cherry Hinton chalk and its solid buttresses towards the front door. On the apex of the roof overhead, the little stone dog of the Talbots watched the trio go, the scholar in his grey, the lady in her crimson and the servant carrying a large square something, wrapped in sacking.

  As Johns had guessed, the library was empty at this time of day, everybody tucking in to the best the most expensive Buttery in Cambridge could offer. Catherine Shelley wandered the panelled hall with its gilded ceiling and its leather-bound volumes, before she gasped at the large volume open on the lectern.

  ‘What is this?’ she asked.

  ‘A mappa mundi, madam,’ Johns told her. ‘A map of the world. We are –’ He pointed to a pinprick near the centre – ‘here. Though I fear, this map is a little out of date. Masters Drake, Hawkins and Frobisher have changed the world rather since this map was made.’

  She looked at him. ‘And where in the world is Christopher Marlowe?’ she asked.

  Johns glanced at the servant.

  ‘Richard has my full confidence,’ she said. ‘I was about to mention Master Marlowe’s name at the gate, but you stopped me. Why was that?’

  Johns walked her to a padded seat by the window and the servant, gratefully, put his parcel on its edge on the floor and rested it against his knees. ‘May I ask your business with Dominus Marlowe?’

  ‘That is between us, sir,’ she said, frostily.

  Johns took in the woman’s dress, her clear eyes, the sweep of her hair under the lace. She was in half-mourning. That meant that she had recently lost a loved one. An educated man, he took an educated guess. ‘Accept my condolences at your loss, Mistress Shelley,’ he said, sitting opposite her. ‘Your husband?’

  Her eyelids flickered. ‘The intelligences will have reached you by now,’ she said. ‘You will know that my husband suffered a traitor’s death at the hands of the headsman. Not two months since. On Tower Hill.’

  ‘Madam,’ Johns said. ‘Look about you. Over there is a copy of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Behind that partition is St Augustine’s Gospel Book. It is the one the saint brought to England in the year of Our Lord 597. It may well be the oldest and the most important book in England. This is my world. I know nothing of what happens beyond these walls.’

  ‘You knew I had come to see Master Marlowe,’ she said, ‘before I had spoken his name. Can you read women’s minds, Professor Johns?’

  The scholar laughed. Women were as much of a mystery to him as the planets that, some men said, revolved around the sun. ‘No mind-reading, I assure you. Just our little Cambridge winds. One of them lifted a corner of your servant’s sacking. He is carrying a portrait. And it is of Christopher Marlowe, to the life. The good proctors didn’t see it because they have between them the intelligence of this chair. Almost. Suffice it to say there are reasons to whisper the name of Marlowe in this university.’

  ‘And in Sussex,’ she added.

  ‘May I see?’ Johns asked.

  Catherine nodded to the servant, who untied the cord that held the sacking and let it fall. He turned the framed canvas so that the subject faced them all. Kit Marlowe in paint half-smiled at them, his arms folded, his hair swept back from his face. Incised gilt buttons glittered on his slashed doublet and his double collar was edged white.

  They looked at it for a long moment. There was something about the glint in the eye and the expression on the face that made Johns feel it was about to speak to him. There was an air of a breath just taken, in readiness.

  ‘I’m not sure that the mouth is right,’ Catherine said. ‘And I know I’ve made the chin too weak.’

  ‘You painted this, Mistress Shelley?’ Johns was impressed.

  ‘No,’ she said, half laughing. ‘My uncle George. George Gower. He worked from sketches I made.’

  ‘In Sussex?’

  ‘Is Kit here?’ she asked in answer to him.

  ‘No,’ he told her. ‘In truth, madam, I have no idea where he is.’

  ‘I promised him this,’ she said. ‘I told him that I would have a likeness made of him.’

  ‘I’m sure he will be suitably flattered,’ Johns said. Then he pointed to the top corner of the portrait. ‘This motto, here . . . ?’

  ‘It means that which feeds me destroys me.’ She blushed and looked down, remembering where she was. ‘I’m sorry. You know that already, of course. I didn’t mean to imply . . .’

  Johns laughed. ‘Yes, you’re right. I learned Latin almost before I learned English. No,’ he said, ‘I mean why is it written there?’

/>   ‘It was something I found,’ she said, ‘shortly after I left Sussex. It was written in the margin of a poem. A poem written by Kit. A poem addressed to me.’

  ‘I had no idea that Kit was in Sussex,’ Johns said.

  ‘Neither did a lot of Catholic traitors.’ Her voice was suddenly harsh, different, cold. ‘Do you really know nothing of politics, Professor Johns?’

  ‘It is sometimes safer in these troubled times,’ he said, ‘to know nothing of politics. I prefer the safer way.’

  She nodded, looking at Marlowe’s portrait. ‘My husband hired Kit as a tutor for our daughters. He told them stories too and sang to them. But he was really an intelligencer, an agent for Sir Francis Walsingham.’

  ‘Kit? The Queen’s spymaster?’ Johns mouthed.

  Catherine smiled. ‘So you do know something of politics?’ she said.

  ‘This is Cambridge, Mistress Shelley,’ Johns reminded her, ‘not the far side of the moon. Let me see if I understand this? Kit Marlowe worked in your household in order to entrap your husband?’

  She nodded. ‘Who was in league with Francis Throckmorton, the Spanish ambassador, the Queen of Scots and God knows who else. Their purpose was to overthrow Elizabeth and place the Scots woman on the throne. Treason and sacrilege.’

  ‘But . . . your husband . . .’ Johns was at a loss.

  ‘Was living a lie, Professor,’ she said. ‘All our life together, I had no idea. While I attended the Anglican Church and took the sacrament, he was taking the Mass, in Latin, usually in Lord Howard’s private chapel in Arundel Castle. He was plotting with renegades and fanatics and murderers . . .’ She caught the look on his face and stopped. ‘Understand this, Professor Johns,’ she said. ‘Like you, I don’t care a fig for politics, whose prayer book we use, who sits on the throne. But what I do care for is my family – my girls – and, once upon a time, my husband. He lied to me, lied to us all and put my girls in terrible danger. Kit Marlowe did not betray him, he saved us. We are safe in Yorkshire now, because of him.’

  There was a silence, then she stood up. ‘Professor, I thank you for your offer of luncheon, but Richard and I must be away. If ever Kit Marlowe returns to Cambridge, you will see that he gets this, won’t you?’