Traitor's Storm

by M. J. Trow

  ‘What does an open boat do when it reaches the sea, Tom?’ Marlowe asked.

  Sledd shrugged. ‘Buggered if I know. The last time I was on one it was all I could do to keep my breakfast down. I would imagine that there are quite a few obstacles out there. Skirrow kept pointing out horses and things, but I wasn’t really paying attention, what with being scared of dying and all.’

  Marlowe shrugged. He had had quite a pleasant crossing but even then there had been a bumpy bit in the middle – he was almost certain that these were not the proper nautical terms, but they would suffice. ‘He would have had no sail.’ He was thinking aloud. ‘They would have given him oars, though. Carey wanted to get rid of him but I think that even he doesn’t hate lawyers enough to want to drown them wholesale.’ He picked up a cold, dead hand and turned it palm up. ‘Look, there, see – blisters.’ He put the hand back and gave it a pat. ‘Which way did he row, though, that’s the question.’

  ‘North,’ Sledd said after a moment’s thought. ‘Away from this place.’

  ‘You would think so, wouldn’t you?’ Marlowe mused. ‘But I think you’re wrong, for two reasons. The first is that the coast of the mainland is a long way for a man unused to rowing and, as you say, there are obstacles out there, though for the life of me I can’t see where the horses come in. The second is that he is a man of some wealth. He has clothes, books, valuables. And he’s told to go. Now. At once. No ceremony. So …’

  Sledd was with him. ‘So he doubles back,’ he said, clicking his fingers, ‘to pick up his stuff.’

  Marlowe nodded. ‘Let’s have a look at Holyrood Street,’ he said.

  Matthew Compton’s house along Holyrood Street was locked and bolted so while Tom Sledd stood whistling and picking his nose on what passed for a pavement, Kit Marlowe broke in. Two clicks of his dagger point and all the secrets of the late lamented lawyer were revealed. Well, not quite all. While Sledd ransacked, very carefully, the downstairs rooms, Marlowe went to work on the upper storey. There was a chest, its lid open, its contents the wardrobe of an officer of the Militia. There was a useful-looking rapier, a wheel-lock pistol, a burgonet and breastplate, a pair of spurs. A pile of books teetered precariously in a corner. They had once stood, Marlowe could tell by the slight impressions in the dust, on a shelf on the wall. They were law books, learned tomes leather-bound and all bore the same legend on the fly: ‘Ex Libris Matthew Compton’. A pair of boots stood on their own in the far corner and a cloak and hat still hung from a peg.

  The bed was cold. He smelled the pillows. Civet. Either Master Compton was not as other Benchers of Lincoln’s Inn or … And the ‘or’ came to him in a moment. There was a long, dark hair on the pillow and a yellowish stain on the satin. The lawyer had been entertaining a lady friend and not that long before he died. The books, the boots, the cloak and hat, all looked as if Compton had been about to leave and take them with him.

  Marlowe knelt on the hard boards and looked under the tester. Cobwebs and not a little dust, but nothing … He almost missed it at first because it was half hidden by the chamber pot. It was a piece of parchment. More than that, it was a note, written in an untidy hand and in haste. It read: ‘Church Litten. Midnight. I must see you again, dearer than life.’

  Dearer than life. That was a good line. He might be able to use that somewhere. This was not the same hand as the letter he had found in Harry Hasler’s room in Quay Street, but letters were fluttering around this Island like the flags of the Armada, somewhere out to sea.

  ‘Anything up there, Kit?’ he heard Tom Sledd call. ‘There’s bugger all down here.’

  ‘Nothing much, Tom,’ Marlowe said. ‘Nothing much,’ and he tucked the letter into his doublet.

  TEN

  George Carey’s bay was saddled and waiting alongside Tom Sledd’s makeshift orchestra pit by midday and the Captain of the Wight was surprised to find a second animal tethered alongside, the black he had bought from William Oglander, of Nunwell. On its back sat Christopher Marlowe, the poet and university wit.

  ‘Mind if I tag along, Sir George?’ the playwright asked. He was dressed for the road with his Colley-Weston slung over his shoulder and Tom Sledd’s shapeless Picadill on his head.

  ‘Er … no,’ Carey said, waiting until the groom had held his knee and hoisted him into the saddle. ‘Are you sure you can keep up? It’s a long ride to the West Wight.’

  ‘I’ll manage,’ Marlowe said. ‘I’m nearing completion of ideas for my play, but I must get the feel of your Island beyond its centre. Mead Hole, I understand, is well worth a visit.’

  ‘Mead Hole?’ Carey scowled. ‘Stay wide of that place, Christopher. Anyway, we’re not going that way. We’re bound for the Needles. Are you armed?’

  ‘My dagger,’ Marlowe said.

  ‘All right.’ Carey took up the reins in his gloved hands. ‘I have my trusty rapier and a brace of wheel-locks. Stay with me and you should be all right. But I warn you, we’re riding into the West Wight.’

  ‘Where the anthropophagi live, I understand.’ Marlowe smiled. ‘The headless men with their faces on their chests.’

  Carey looked at him for a moment, then burst out laughing. ‘The anthropophagi?’ he said. ‘In the West Wight, they’ll be the least of our worries, believe me.’ And he hauled his rein and clattered away under the arch of the barbican, Marlowe behind him. The last thing the poet heard was Avis Carey’s dulcet roar as she clapped her hands and ordered the set builders back to work.

  The wind was blowing from the south-west, unseasonably strong for this time of year, and long before they reached Calbourne with its water mill and hissing geese, Kit Marlowe owed Tom Sledd a new hat. The original was tumbling away across the high ridge of the land the pair were cantering over. The miller of Calbourne had all his family paraded, from his eldest, a stout lad who might be useful in the Militia in a month or two, to a little girl, all curls and snot, who sheltered behind her mother at the hugeness of the horses that snorted and pawed the ground in front of her.

  Caps came off at Shalcombe too and there were three hearty cheers for the governor, God bless him. Then the riders were trotting out along the road that led to Freshwater, the forest of Brighstone dark and gloomy on the sloping ground that led to the sea. All along this stretch, Marlowe noticed that Carey’s eyes rarely left the sea. He was as concerned now as he had been that second day of Marlowe’s visit, striding his ramparts. He reined in and pointed. ‘That’s Catherine’s Race,’ he said, ‘and beyond that, Catherine’s Deeps.’ He caught the mystified look on Marlowe’s face. ‘Oh, yes, it looks calm enough today, doesn’t it, for all the whitecaps. But that’s a graveyard you see there, Christopher. Dead men still in their ships’ holds, full fathom five and feeding the fishes. Freshwater’s over the next rise. We’ll eat there.’

  Edmund Burley joined the travellers at Freshwater. He was captain of the castle at Yarmouth, one of those fortresses built as a precaution in the days of King Harry of blessed memory. He was a large and jolly man who proceeded to eat and drink Carey and Marlowe under the table, much to the delight of the innkeeper of the Crown, whose establishment nestled in the lea of the church.

  ‘Are you ready, Edmund?’ George Carey asked as the three men were preparing for the road. ‘For what’s coming, I mean?’

  ‘Readier than most,’ Burley replied, swigging the last of his ale. He looked at Marlowe. ‘The dons will land in one of four places, Master Marlowe. The least likely is Sandown Bay. The bastard French tried that in my dear old dad’s day and got a bloody nose there, for all the beach is shallow. This side of the Island they’ll try here, at Freshwater, at Brighstone and at Chale. The problem with all those is the Race and the Deeps. That’s our secret weapon. It’ll destroy Philip’s ships faster than the guns of that old pizzle the Lord Admiral … Oh, begging yer pardon, George. Forgot he’s your cousin.’

  Carey waved the insult aside. With Spain knocking at his gate he had better things to do than antagonize his captains.
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br />   ‘Course.’ Edmund Burley timed his parting shot to perfection. ‘If the bastards land in all four places at once, then we’re buggered.’ And all George Carey could do was scowl at the beaming idiot. He had never understood what made Edmund Burley so damned cheerful.

  All day Carey and Marlowe had ridden past the beacons, tall masts dotted along the ridge that formed the Island’s spine, with ladders lashed to them and iron fire baskets crowning their tops. The faggots lay ready, roped under canvas to keep them dry. Each beacon was actually a pair. As Carey explained, one light meant a state of emergency: ‘Handle your pike.’ Two flames guttering side by side meant something like ‘Prepare to meet your God’. At Freshwater, on the chalky slopes above the bay and again on the promontory men called the Needles, where the white rocks stood sentinel above the roaring surf, there were three. There were three likewise, Carey explained, at the eastern forelands on the high ground of Culver, by Bembridge Ledge. That overlooked the shallow beach that Captain Burley had mentioned. There was a fort there too, Carey had said, but he had no faith that it would hold the Spaniards long.

  All that day Marlowe had talked to George Carey, dropped snippets of information, watched the man’s reaction. Everyone hated him; Marlowe knew that already. Only Carey’s sister and perhaps his wife supported the man. He had no children and no friends. The gentlemen of the Wight and their ladies had no qualms about eating and drinking the man out of house and home at one of his parties. And everyone today had been the epitome of respectful tenants. And yet, something was not quite right about the Carey household and Marlowe was not going merely by the word of John Vaughan. It was something he had noticed himself. Something to do with missing gardeners and murdered lawyers and farmers dead in their own fields.

  ‘Captain! Captain!’ a voice was calling from the road and a solitary horseman was lashing his mount across the tussocks of grass cropped short by the sheep. Carey swung his bay away from the beacons and took the salute of the galloper. Marlowe could not catch much of it, because the wind was rising again and the ridge was exposed. The horseman saluted again and spurred back.

  ‘Marlowe.’ Carey walked his horse over to the man. ‘I’ve been called away. Some trouble at Nunwell.’

  ‘Nunwell?’

  ‘The Oglanders. It’s probably nothing.’

  ‘I’ll come with you.’

  ‘No, no, Christopher, my dear fellow. It’s a punishing ride and night’s approaching. No offence, but you’d only be in the way. Here.’ Carey unbuckled his rapier. ‘Take my sword. Unless you want to find lodgings back in Freshwater, you’ve a long ride back to Carisbrooke. Go that way, to Chale.’ He pointed to the south-east. ‘Follow the coast. It’s an easier road.’

  ‘Very well, sir.’ Marlowe took the proffered sword. ‘Thank you.’ He slid the expensive weapon with its gilt curled guard into his saddle strap and watched the Captain of the Wight disappear into the darkness, his hoofbeats soon lost to the cloak of the coming night.

  Marlowe watched the two men canter off in the direction of Newport and suddenly felt rather alone. Carey’s instructions, thrown over a retreating shoulder, to take the coast road to Chale and then turn left did not somehow fill him with confidence. A Governor of an island and Captain of the Militia should be a little more precise in his geographical detail, Marlowe couldn’t help thinking, but on the other hand, on an island how far wrong could he possibly go? The sun was beginning to sink below the Down which led to the Needles and as he turned his horse’s head to the east it was already clear that night would not be long in coming.

  Marlowe was a city boy at heart but had spent plenty of nights out in the open for reasons nefarious and otherwise and so was not afraid of the dark. Fear of the dark, he had always believed, came from thinking that there were things at your back more scary than you were and when that thought dug itself into a man’s heart, then screaming madness would follow. He touched his dagger lightly, nestling in the small of his back, and the sword hilt at his thigh and knew that he was ready for anything the night could throw at him.

  There was no moon yet and the rays of the setting sun still lit the sky behind him. The sea to his right was gleaming in golden ripples and after the wild weather of the last few days, all seemed strangely still and calm. There was a bank of cloud to the south which was picking up the rose tints of the sky, but it had billowing depths that promised – or threatened – some interesting weather in the future. All Marlowe wanted was to get back to the mansion without getting drenched, so he wished the cloud a thousand miles away and spurred his horse into a canter. While there was enough light, he could risk a faster pace; dark would come soon enough and then he would need to walk the animal. George Carey was a generous man, but even he might baulk at a horse with a broken leg. The silence was so absolute that the sound of the hoofbeats on the road sounded like thunder and the clip of the occasional flint being struck by a shoe set the poet’s teeth on edge, so after less than a mile, he slowed the animal back to a rolling amble that went very well with the silently lapping sea and the call of a seabird, out too late from its nest down on the cliff below.

  As he ambled along on his horse, Marlowe let his mind wander where it would. Although his cover story of wanting inspiration for a play had been just that, a story to cover his darker purpose, he was a playwright first and foremost, a projectioner least of all. The dark around him became peopled with all manner of apparitions and he turned them over in his mind, discarding them when the image was too bizarre. The three witches outlined briefly on the hilltop he dismissed at once as being so far-fetched that not even a Rose audience at their most ale-soaked would swallow them. A beautiful woman with a face of an angel led his horse for almost a mile, her gentle hand on the bridle. Marlowe watched her treading softly alongside him, turning her head from time to time to give him a sad smile.

  ‘Nell?’ he said to the dark and with a spark like a bubble flown too high, the woman disappeared. Dr John Dee’s dead wife, the lovely Helene, mourned even now by all who had known her, had come to keep him company for a while and the thought gladdened him, even as he wiped away a tear.

  The horse, calm until now, gave a snicker and tossed its mane. Out to sea, just beyond the gleam of the starlight that was beginning to light the waves, strange creatures gambolled, throwing up silver spray and shrieking to the sky. Marlowe shook his curls to match the horse’s flying mane and turned his mount landwards. This island truly was a haunted place and even as the thought passed through his mind, a flash of flying fire crossed his path. It dissolved into myriad points of light which flared once or twice and then went out. Risking everything, Marlowe closed his eyes and counted to ten. When he opened them, the points of light had gone, replaced by the steady lamplight of a house ahead of him, on the seaward side of the road.

  Marlowe approached the low door and, leaning out of the saddle, tapped on it sharply. The voices he had heard from inside stopped at once and the dark velvet silence of the night rolled back in. His horse shook his head and the bridle jingled, but that was all. Marlowe rapped again and called out. ‘Is there any one at home?’

  After a few seconds, a voice, from its sound coming from a mouth pressed against the door, said, ‘Who is’t?’

  ‘My name is Kit Marlowe,’ the poet said, trying to sound friendly. ‘I think I may have lost my way. Can you tell me where I am?’

  There was a storm of whispering from the other side of the door and then a voice, elderly and female from the sound of it, called out. ‘If’n you be Kit, us don’t want ee here. Begone, back to where you be from.’

  ‘Marlowe is my name,’ he said, beginning to get a little testy. After all, to get back to where he was from was just what he wanted to do. ‘Marlowe. Christopher Marlowe. The playwright.’ He was about to add that he was a friend of George Carey but that might have earned him a pitchfork through his throat.

  There was shuffling from the other side of the door and the sound of someone falling heavily. Then the ancient
female spoke again. ‘You did say your name was Kit?’

  ‘That’s what some call me, yes.’

  ‘Ar, your dark master.’

  ‘I have no master … wait a minute.’ It was all coming back to him now. He had not been in touch with Reginald Scot for a while but he wished he had him here now. What that man didn’t know about witchcraft was not worth knowing. And he had talked of a familiar, what was the creature’s name …? ‘Are you thinking of Kit with the Canstick, by any chance? Mother,’ he added, for good measure.

  The answer was a shriek.

  ‘I am not …’ Marlowe leant his head against the eaves above the door and cursed volubly under his breath. ‘Goodnight to the house,’ he sighed. ‘I will ask directions elsewhere.’

  As he was turning his horse back to the road, the door flew open and a clod of something he hoped was earth flew past his ear, spraying wetness as it went.

  ‘Get hence, foul fiend!’ a cracked voice screamed. ‘Get hence, back to the pit of …’ A racking cough took the rest of the diatribe and the crone hobbled back into the ramshackle house, muttering between hacks.

  ‘Yes, yes,’ Marlowe said to himself. ‘Whatever you say, you mad old bat.’ He pressed his heels into the horse’s sides and cantered off towards the next light showing in the gloom ahead.