Scorpion's Nest (2012)

by Trow, M J

  Marlowe spun the man round so that he was facing him.

  ‘Hello, Kit,’ he said.

  Marlowe stood there, gaping like an idiot. Then he recovered himself and, with an expansive gesture, introduced the man to Aldred. ‘Master Aldred,’ he said, ‘please meet Professor Michael Johns, of Cambridge University.’

  ‘Late of Cambridge University,’ Johns corrected him, adjusting his clothing after his mild rough housing.

  ‘Ah,’ Aldred said calmly, lighting more candles. ‘If you two are going to have a little reunion, do it in your own time. We have more pressing business. Marlowe, the door, if you please. You might have to give it a shove; it tends to jump its hinges when roughly handled. We don’t want half of Rheims knowing all about the Queen’s business.’

  Robert Greene had dressed and prepared with care. He had learned a lot since his last encounter with Marlowe and his little box of tricks and he was armed with a chisel, a clamp and his right hand was squeezed into a gauntlet he had prised from a tomb in St Mary’s on his way from his rooms to Corpus Christi. He had learned his lesson with the Proctors and had watched carefully to find their Achilles’ heel. They were always on their guard, but they were slightly less wary at shift change and it was then that he had managed to get through the gate. He was wearing a fustian gown, to blend both with the mass of scholars and the dark and he felt that he would succeed this time in finding Marlowe’s manuscript, wherever it might be hidden.

  In a scurrying half crouch, he had made it in the twilight to the doorway that led to Marlowe’s stair and was now crouched beneath a straggling rosemary bush which leaned damply on the wall. He had been quite comfortable for the first hour, as the final scholars had come and gone, in chatting groups or alone. He had leant his back against the wall and braced his knees to take his weight and had at first happily thought he could stay like that all night if need be. Then he had felt a strange sensation across his face and in brushing off the source of it had crushed a large and juicy spider against his upper lip. He had jumped with the horror of it and had not been without cramping pains here or there since. The rosemary smell, which had been so enticing to begin with, now began to cloy and with the smell of the dead arachnid overlaid on it, was beginning to turn his stomach more than somewhat. Finally, he knew his moment had come.

  He edged out from behind his rosemary bush, swathed in cobwebs, crusted with stone flaking from the old wall and as stiff as a board. He walked on unsteady legs, the calves aching from what seemed like hours in the same, unnatural position. Leaning on the wall and the door jamb for support he insinuated himself into the dark of the small lobby at the foot of the stair and stood for a while in the shadows, catching his breath and calming himself down. He breathed in and out slowly through his nose, counting each breath to make them even. He had found that he needed to calm himself down like this more and more lately, as the obsession with finding Marlowe’s manuscript had grown and grown, excluding all else, including his own weak muse.

  He had reached a count of eight on the exhaled breath when a voice quietly spoke in his ear.

  ‘Dominus Greene,’ said Proctor Lomas in the happy tone of a man once more on night duty. ‘I believe that I have already told you that you are not allowed on College premises.’ He grabbed at the man’s fustian robe at the shoulder, preparing to haul him away, but was left with just the fabric dangling in his huge fist. He looked down, puzzled, at the inert body of Robert Greene, fainted dead away at his feet. He was sorry that the whole thing had been so easy and, sighing, picked the St John’s man up as though he were a child and flung him over his shoulder.

  Reaching the gate, he was about to fling the scholar down on the cobbles, but a rare spark of humanity stayed his hand. Instead, he leant him against the wall, with his legs outstretched and the gown over his head. Anonymity thus preserved, Robert Greene twitched and slept his way through the remainder of the night, his hand cold inside its iron glove, clutching and swatting at phantom spiders, grown as big as Kit Marlowe, and just as tricky.

  EIGHT

  Aldred had reached down four glasses by instinct and was prying the stopper from a bottle of wine before the men had found seats on crates and sacks in his shop. He explained in a low voice that the ‘little’ woman was not a heavy sleeper and she would be rather raucous in her discontent should they wake her. She slept in a truckle bed in the room at the back and so the shop was by far the safest place for their talk, if they wanted to avoid a broom across their backs. Marlowe, who had met the lady and Phelippes and Johns, both equipped with good imaginations, complied happily and soon they were assembled in the light from the candles round the room.

  After the excitement of their meeting, the men were all a little uncertain how to begin. Johns was the first to speak.

  ‘You have a nice shop here, Master Aldred,’ he said, in a conversational tone. ‘Does it do well?’

  ‘It’s a living,’ Aldred said, shrugging a shoulder. ‘I have some very loyal customers.’

  Marlowe looked around the circle and his heart sank. This should have been a meeting of Francis Walsingham’s top men, but instead the group seemed to consist of a vintner, a lecturer, a strange academic and a playwright. Perhaps Walsingham and Faunt knew what they were doing, but if so, he wasn’t quite sure what that might be. He coughed discreetly and brought the meeting to something resembling order.

  ‘Would it perhaps be better if we bent our minds to what we are here for, instead of pleasantries?’ he asked.

  Aldred drew himself up a notch. ‘As the senior man here,’ he said, testily, ‘I think I should direct this meeting.’

  ‘You may be older, Aldred,’ Phelippes said, ‘but I am the expert called in specially. This should be my meeting.’

  ‘Do you know anything about Rheims?’ Aldred said, sweet reason overlaying the venom.

  ‘Do you?’ Phelippes asked. ‘We may be strangers here, but we found your house straight away, while you two were playing hide and seek. We didn’t need much skill to break in.’

  ‘I just leaned against the door,’ Johns said, proudly, smiling round the group. ‘It gave way.’

  ‘It does that,’ Aldred said. ‘It was just a lucky push. So, as I was saying . . .’

  ‘As I was saying—’ Phelippes broke in before being interrupted himself.

  ‘What in the name of Sant’ Remi and all the Saints in Heaven,’ came a screech from the back room, ‘is going on out there? Solomon, have you taken leave of your senses? You know I need my beauty sleep. Be quiet, or you will feel my broom across your backs!’

  The men fell silent. Aldred looked round beseechingly and then called, ‘Sorry, my little turtle dove. I just have a friend or two out here for a chat. I’ll be coming in to bed soon, precious heart.’ He frantically tapped his finger on his lips, praying for silence.

  ‘Madame Aldred?’ Phelippes mouthed.

  ‘No!’ Aldred rasped. ‘No, by no means.’ The vintner wasn’t going into the explanations again.

  The voice from the back room changed its tone. It was as though a tiger was purring like a pet kitten. ‘Solly,’ it called huskily, ‘why don’t you come in here now?’

  Aldred looked like a rabbit caught by a stoat. He cleared his throat. ‘I have friends here,’ he called back. ‘And I don’t think it’s Friday, is it?’

  ‘Let’s pretend it’s Friday,’ the woman shouted. ‘And your friends can wait. It isn’t as if you will be long.’

  In the mellow candlelight, Aldred’s blush almost went unnoticed. The other three looked at the ceiling, through the dark window, at their own fingernails, anywhere but at the little vintner. He swallowed hard and called, sweetly, ‘But beloved . . .’

  ‘Get in here, Solomon Aldred,’ boomed the voice. ‘Don’t make me come and get you.’

  Aldred looked frantically from man to man, but none of them spoke. Then Marlowe took pity on him, in a way. ‘Please, Solomon,’ he said, ‘don’t mind us. Go and pretend it is Friday. I will explain
what we have discovered to Master Phelippes. It doesn’t need us both.’

  ‘No, but I . . .’

  ‘No, no,’ Phelippes said, standing and helping Aldred to his feet. ‘Off you go. We’ll see you in an hour or so, will we?’

  ‘More like a minute,’ rumbled the voice from beyond the door. There was a creak and a rustle as Aldred’s enormous inamorata prepared to join them in the shop.

  Aldred looked at the door, then at the men seated around the candle and, with a whimper, went to his doom.

  In the silence that followed his departure, the three men looked at each other, then Johns ventured, ‘That was unusual. But of course, I am not generally cognizant of the life of a projectioner.’

  ‘No,’ Phelippes said. ‘Even for a projectioner that was a little unusual. I’m not sure about you two, but I would be more comfortable discussing our business elsewhere.’

  Distressing noises had begun to emanate from the back room and the others, with a quick nod, jumped up and made for the door, Johns taking the trouble to blow out the candle. The last man out pulled the door shut behind him.

  The three men – the two projectioners and the professor – had walked a little way down the road before Marlowe began to laugh. By the time they reached Phelippes and Johns’ lodgings they were as helpless as any drunkards and they had to pause for a while outside to compose themselves.

  ‘It’s a while since I had a laugh like that,’ Marlowe said. ‘The English College is not somewhere where laughter is welcome, particularly.’

  ‘Corpus Christi is the same,’ Johns said. ‘Now Norgate is gone and Harvey is running the place . . .’

  ‘Norgate is gone?’ Marlowe broke in. ‘Dead?’

  ‘As good as. He tried to convene a meeting to convict his housekeeper of heresy some weeks ago. It was the last straw.’

  ‘He has always been a little eccentric,’ Marlowe mused. ‘And his housekeeper is a very frightening woman, as I recall.’

  ‘The meeting was called in retrospect,’ Johns said. ‘He had already tied her to a stake in the quad and tried to set fire to her. Heaven only knows what would have happened if the wood had not been damp.’

  ‘Ah. I see your problem. But Harvey? How was that allowed to happen? Surely, Dr Copcott . . .?’ Marlowe suddenly realized something and the knowledge ran down his spine like iced water. ‘Is Greene still hanging around?’

  ‘I understand they have fallen out. I left Cambridge as soon as I tendered my resignation –’ he held up a hand for silence as Marlowe opened his mouth – ‘but the rumours had already begun.’

  ‘You have described a hot friend cooling, Professor Johns,’ Marlowe said. ‘I am glad to hear it, though. Greene wants something I have hidden in my room.’

  ‘It won’t be your room by now, if I know Gabriel Harvey,’ Johns said.

  ‘That won’t matter. It is hidden well enough to wait for me until I get back.’

  ‘Which will be never if we stand around out here much longer,’ Phelippes said. ‘I will have caught the sweating sickness from the cold and you will never solve your code or whatever it is Aldred found.’

  ‘Shhh,’ Marlowe warned. ‘There are ears everywhere, Master Phelippes. It doesn’t matter what language you speak, there is someone who can understand it. You can’t trust Latin at all, almost everyone has a little, from their church services. Greek is better, but even then you can’t be sure.’

  ‘Hebrew?’ Johns ventured.

  ‘Better still, but I’m not sure I could follow it,’ Marlowe said.

  ‘Shame on you,’ Johns said. ‘What about Walloon? Portuguese?’

  ‘I think the best plan is to just say nothing in the open, Doctor,’ Marlowe said. ‘We want no misunderstanding.’

  ‘So we can go inside, then?’ Phelippes said, crossly, slapping his arms to try to get warm.

  ‘That sounds an ideal plan,’ Marlowe said. ‘Lead the way. I need to discuss a little job I want you to do for me, Master Phelippes.’

  Two men wandered the edge of the moat of Fotheringay Castle that Thursday. A weak sun gilded the old stones and the only sound was the splash of a trout leaping for the last gnats skimming low over the water. Lord Burghley’s hair and beard had whitened over the last year and he needed more light these days to cope with the scrawled state letters everybody from the Queen to the scullery-maid bombarded him with. The cane he had once snapped upright at each step was now a crutch, a third and essential leg and his progress over the Northamptonshire grass was slow.

  Francis Walsingham was edgy. The pain from his boil was gone but the lancing had been horrific and he had taken to his bed for three days to get over it. Burghley was his mentor, as wise as an owl and just as silent in his decisions. Owls hunted by night and their strikes were swift and deadly. Any Catholic vole bustling on its way to a Mass was fair game to Lord Burghley. The old man had weathered more storms than Job but the greatest rose up before him now, in the calm of a Midlands evening, with the trout leaping and the cold and calculating Secretary at his elbow.

  ‘What did you think of her performance today, Francis?’ Burghley asked. ‘Our Queen of Scots?’

  ‘Better than I expected, my lord,’ Walsingham said, staring straight ahead. ‘The stick was good.’ He could have kicked himself for that, but it was out now in the air and he could not retract it.

  Burghley snorted. ‘She has rheumatism, apparently,’ he said, limping on. ‘Chartley was damp.’

  Walsingham smiled. ‘Not as damp as Fotheringay, I’ll wager.’

  ‘I’d forgotten her eyes,’ Burghley said, growing poetic. ‘The richest hazel. I’m not surprised that men are captivated by her.’

  ‘I’ll overlook that treason, my lord,’ the spymaster said with a wry smile, ‘bearing in mind the business we’re about.’

  ‘What are we about, Francis?’ the Secretary asked. ‘I sometimes wonder.’

  ‘She’s put on weight at Chartley,’ Walsingham observed. ‘Full and fat, you might say.’

  ‘Not too fat for the axe, I’ll warrant.’ Burghley looked grim. ‘Oh, Mother of God, no.’

  Walsingham followed the old man’s gaze to where a Privy Councillor was hurrying across the grass tufts towards them, striding on his dancer’s legs with ease. ‘The Queen’s bellwether,’ he muttered. He didn’t like Sir Christopher Hatton and here at Fotheringay he liked him less and less every day.

  ‘My lord.’ Hatton doffed his hat in a courtly flourish to Burghley and nodded curtly to Walsingham. Burghley sighed. Christopher Hatton had the political grasp of Burghley’s donkey at Hatfield, but he was a formidable jouster, that most pointless and suicidal of sports and his galliard had captivated the Queen.

  ‘Vice Chamberlain,’ Burghley acknowledged him, laying stress, as he always did, on the first word.

  ‘May I have a word, sir?’ Hatton asked, his still-golden curls glowing in the fading evening light. He glanced at Walsingham. ‘Alone.’

  Burghley walked on, shuffling next to the Vice Chamberlain’s great and easy strides. ‘Anything you have to say is fit for the ears of Sir Francis. We are all members of the same Privy Council, when all is said and done.’

  ‘But all was not said and done today, my lord, was it?’

  Burghley stopped and frowned up at the man. He was still a popinjay, in his colleyweston cloak and roisterer’s swagger. How such a man could have graduated from the Inner Temple was beyond Burghley’s comprehension. ‘Meaning?’ the old man snapped.

  Hatton was temporarily at a loss for words. ‘The trial, my lord,’ he said, ‘of the Queen of Scots.’ He looked at the Secretary of State, then at the spymaster and saw nothing but emptiness. ‘Did you or did you not, gentlemen,’ he asked, hands on hips, ‘sit in that hall today and witness what I witnessed?’

  ‘We did,’ said Walsingham, sensing that Burghley was walking on again and had no intention of engaging this oaf in legal fisticuffs.

  ‘Where were the jury? Her Majesty’s counsel? Those letters the p
rosecution hinges on – where are they? Where are the witnesses in her defence?’

  ‘Most of them are propping up London Bridge’s spikes,’ Walsingham told him, ‘at least their heads are. Nether limbs you will find displayed in the Catholic parts of this great realm of ours.’

  ‘The secretaries.’ Hatton wouldn’t give an inch. ‘Er . . . Nan and Curle. Why were they not called? The Queen demanded it.’

  ‘We have their written statements,’ Burghley muttered, not bothering to look Hatton in the face. ‘Let that be enough.’

  ‘By God, it isn’t enough!’ the Vice Chamberlain roared, blocking Burghley’s path.

  Walsingham edged between them. ‘I remember another court room,’ he said softly. ‘The trial of Father Ballard. You were impressive then. How did it go? I was particularly struck by it. You asked Ballard “Is this your religio Catholica?” and before the old Papist could answer, you hit him with “No, rather it is Diabolica”. That was very good.’

  ‘Don’t patronize me, Walsingham,’ Hatton sneered. ‘I’m a better lawyer than you.’

  Burghley snorted.

  ‘I saw no justice today,’ Hatton said, keeping his voice level with an audible effort. ‘If we are to try the Queen—’

  ‘Justice!’ Burghley spat, spinning the man round. ‘Hatton, do you love your Queen?’

  ‘Of course.’ the Vice Chamberlain stood half a head taller as if to prove it.

  ‘Roughly from behind, we hear,’ Walsingham muttered and in an instant Hatton’s rapier tip was tickling his throat. Burghley surprised himself by being able to move so fast and his cane batted the blade aside, causing only superficial damage to the spymaster’s ruff. His cold grey eyes bored into the Vice Chamberlain’s. ‘We know you are loyal, Christopher,’ he said. ‘And we know you would lay down your life for Her Majesty. We also know that you are an honest man. So . . .’ he felt the tension slip and put a gentle hand on the courtier’s padded shoulder, ‘no, there was no justice today. Every man in that court speaks for the Queen of England. And the only way to see the Queen of England live is to see the Queen of Scots dead. Walsingham here would do it with poison. Isn’t that right, Francis?’