Traitor's Storm

by M. J. Trow

  This time he dismounted and looped the horse’s reins over a handy fence. He left Carey’s rapier with it, but his dagger was at his back. He walked up to the door and rapped smartly with his knuckles. This time there would be no shilly-shallying about with names. Just directions to Carisbrooke and make it snappy. The door opened a crack and a blast of warmth and a babble of voices came with the narrow beam of light.

  ‘Good evening to you,’ he said, in what he hoped was a suitably friendly and yokel-flavoured greeting. ‘I was wondering if you could tell me how to get to Carisbrooke Castle from here?’

  The door shut and a voice asked a question, to be met with a gale of raucous laughter.

  The door creaked open again and the same voice repeated the answer which had proved most popular with the crowd. ‘They do say,’ there was a spluttering snigger, ‘they do say that to get to Carisbrooke Castle, they ’oodn’t start from here.’ The laughter roared out again. ‘Us’d start from up the road aways.’

  Marlowe clenched his fist and took a deep breath. ‘But always assuming that I was not up the road aways, but had got myself lost here, then how can I get to Carisbrooke Castle?’

  The voice gave a cough and a blast of ale came through the door.

  ‘Sorry, sir,’ the man said. ‘I shouldn’t mock them as are lost out in these mazy roads at dead of night. No moon nor glim to light his way. You just goes on down the road … you do be come from Brook, do you?’

  ‘I … think so. I came from the west.’

  ‘Ar. Well, you carries on down the road aways and you come to an inn.’

  ‘Isn’t this an inn?’ Marlowe asked. It had all the ingredients: heat, light, loud men and the stench of tobacco and ale.

  ‘Lord no, matey. No inn, this.’ The speaker closed the door to a touch and spoke over his shoulder. ‘The stranger do think this is an inn,’ he cried. The laughter this time made the little window to the side of the door rattle in its frame. ‘No, sir,’ the man recovered himself eventually and carried on. ‘The inn be down the road aways. But she be shut. Not much fer drinking, down here, we b’ain’t. Sir?’ A grizzled head stuck out from the door and looked both ways. ‘Sir?’

  But Christopher Marlowe had gone, up the road aways.

  The inn appeared to be closed. Not just for tonight, but forever if the smashed windows and board roughly nailed across the door was anything to judge by. But there was a road, heading inland just alongside one wall and so Marlowe took it, as the only option. He had gauged as well as he could how far he had come and he thought he was probably more or less due south of Newport, so as long as he kept going that way, he should soon see something he recognized. The road down here was little more than a track but his horse was a sure-footed creature and he left it to its own devices. A sea mist was curling up from the beach, its stealthy tendrils twisting round the horse’s hooves and swirling in little spirals as it stepped carefully along the rutted road. Marlowe looked to his left and saw a gate standing open in a rough wall, enclosing a churchyard. The graves were flat and the land was higher so he urged the horse through the gate. Up higher he would be free of the mist and also he might be able to see more lights ahead. Although dwellings had not served him well so far, if he went from hamlet to hamlet, at least he would not be riding off into the wilds or, worse, off a cliff.

  The horse dug its hooves into the moss inside the gate and turned its head, desperately trying to get back to the rough roadway.

  Marlowe kicked the black in the ribs and urged him on. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘They’re all dead here. Safer than the people we’ve met so far on this ride, wouldn’t you say? On, on.’ And he pressed with his knees again and dug in his heels. The black stepped forward gingerly as if every step was agony, rolling his eyes, his ears back flat to his head. Marlowe bent over the horse’s neck, patting and stroking him, murmuring in his ear to encourage him on. They took the broad path round the church, to reach what Marlowe was sure was higher ground to the north, and came out on a flat area, dotted with table tombs. Marlowe had never seen a churchyard quite like it. Either only rich people died here, or the poor were buried elsewhere. There were no standing memorials or even any flat to the ground. All around, spread randomly over the space, were once splendid tombs, white in the starlight. The mist was only a ground covering here, lapping at the edges of the slabs of stone where they disappeared into the rabbit-cropped grass.

  With his back to the dark flint-pocked wall of the church, Marlowe looked north and could see a few faint lights. So far so good. He pulled on the rein to turn his horse’s head, but the animal was now completely spooked and wouldn’t move an inch. The playwright patted the animal’s neck and eventually he felt the tight muscles begin to soften and the horse began its turn. Then it was Marlowe’s turn to be transfixed. Right in front of him, over an empty sward, the top of one of the tombs was very slowly turning. The noise was only slight but it chilled his blood. It was the creak of stone on stone, as the fragments of shell embedded in each piece scratched and ground at each other. It was the cold sound of night, the chink of spade on grit as the gravedigger did his lonely work. The horse gave a nervous whicker and the stone stopped turning for a moment, as if the ghoul beneath was wary of warm-blooded creatures breathing above its head. Then, when no other sound came, the relentless slide of the tomb top carried on. Slowly, slowly, like a glacier calving in Greenland in the Ice Sea at the top of the world, the slab slid on until it finally toppled to the ground at one end, biting into the turf. Marlowe let out his breath in a long silent exhalation and then waited, with empty lungs, for what was to follow.

  He had just time to see a cadaverous hand grip the edge of the tomb when the horse, its nerves finally broken, sprang from the shadow of the church and careered down the slope, taking the churchyard wall in one bound. Horse and rider had passed the next two hamlets before either of them dared stop. Marlowe’s heart had stopped thumping by the time they reached the plain below the castle and he could see the torches on the battlements. By the time they clattered in under the gatehouse, even the cold sweat had dried on his brow and no one would have known he had seen the dead rise that night.

  The house was asleep when Kit Marlowe crept up to his bedchamber, his boots tucked under his arm and a hand outstretched to feel his way. He had forgotten how dark the countryside could be, away from the bustling streets with the torches on busy corners and stalls selling every conceivable edible thing and some it was best not to think too carefully about. He reached his door without encountering anyone and slipped inside gratefully. Presumably, the crisis at Nunwell had been averted and Sir George Carey was sleeping the sleep of the just in his room just along the gallery.

  The maidservant had been into the room at dusk and pulled the heavy curtains across the windows and the room was totally dark, but Marlowe had been in the mansion for enough nights now to know exactly where the bed was and that was all he wanted. He slipped off his Venetians and his doublet and crawled into the bed from the footboard, sinking against the pillows gratefully. After a moment, he pulled back the covers and put his cold legs down inside the crisp linen sheets. He turned his head and sighed. When he was really rich, when this spying and dodging and watching his back was all over, when he could finally do exactly as he wanted, he would have a crisp new bed every night of the year. He let himself fall asleep.

  Just as he was on the edge, about to drop off, he heard a rustle beyond the bed hangings and a low voice say his name.

  ‘Master Marlowe?’

  It was so quiet he couldn’t begin to identify it, but there was a precedent.

  ‘Mistress Avis?’ he said, not bothering to whisper.

  ‘Avis?’ There was a click of a tinder and a candle burst into light on the desk in front of the window. It illuminated the cheek and lips of the mistress of Carisbrooke Castle.

  ‘Mistress Carey!’ Marlowe said. ‘My apologies.’ As he spoke he couldn’t for the life of him think what he was apologizing for, but it seemed a
s good a way as any of starting a conversation, in his bedchamber, at the dead of night.

  ‘Avis?’ the woman asked again. She had had some surprises in her life, some good, some bad, but none as unexpected as this.

  Marlowe sat up in bed and looked across at her. This was becoming a bit of a habit and he couldn’t think of a way to stop these women coming into his room willing, nilling. It was their home after all, but even so, surely the humblest guest deserved some privacy. ‘You misunderstand me, madam,’ he said. ‘Mistress Avis …’

  Bet Carey held up a hand. ‘Please, Master Marlowe. I won’t pry. I had heard some gossip from my maid but … but that is not why I am here.’ She blushed, an unusual response from Bet, known as the boldest woman at Elizabeth’s court or anywhere else.

  Marlowe could tell that sleep was not to be his lot tonight. He gathered his pillows together and leaned back on them, settling down for a long and probably difficult conversation. He looked at his hostess, dressed in a nightgown under a plain stuff wrap. She had a shawl over her head and although the night was chilly for June, it was clearly more for disguise than warmth that she wore it. She leaned forward, keeping her voice low.

  ‘Master Marlowe, I need your help.’

  He leaned forward to catch what she was saying. Then he came to a decision. It might prove his undoing, but he could barely hear her. She was whispering but also her voice kept fading as her will deserted her and he would never get the facts this way. He rearranged the pillows again, slid over in the bed and patted the vacated half.

  ‘If you must whisper, Mistress Carey,’ he said, ‘then please do it in my ear and not to the air. Blow out the candle and come and sit with me here.’ He patted the coverlet encouragingly. ‘Look. I will stay under the covers. You can stay above them. All will be quite proper, I can assure you.’

  To her surprise, Bet Carey took no offence. It was not often men took pains to observe the niceties and she found she liked it. She looked across at the bed. The man who sat there, patting the empty space beside him, was probably the most handsome man who had ever made such a gesture. His hair was curling round his face from the damp night air, his eyes were large and dark, his mouth carved like a cherub’s. There was danger there but she somehow knew it was not anything she need fear. Making her mind up, she blew out the candle and in two strides was at the bedside. She hopped up with the grace of long practice and curled up against the pillows, her knees to one side. Marlowe could feel the warmth of her and her breath stirred his hair.

  ‘That’s better,’ she whispered. ‘I can talk more freely in the dark.’

  ‘The dark makes many things easier,’ Marlowe agreed. ‘Now tell me, why are you here?’

  ‘I am frightened, Master Marlowe,’ she said quietly. ‘I am afraid of … you will misunderstand me. I should not have come.’ She started to get off the bed.

  ‘You have come so far,’ he whispered. ‘Don’t go now. I promise I will jump to no conclusions.’

  She settled back and took a deep breath. ‘I am afraid of my husband, Master Marlowe.’

  Marlowe was surprised. Sir George Carey was a man of sudden enthusiasms and his decisions were not always the wisest; he may even be a traitor, but he had not seen that side of him. ‘Does he beat you?’ he asked.

  ‘No, no, of course not. He wouldn’t raise a hand to me. No, I am afraid he is … there is no way of putting this so that it sounds like sense, Master Marlowe. I am afraid he is killing people.’

  ‘Anyone in particular?’ As he said it, Marlowe knew it sounded trite. He would certainly not put that line in the mouth of anyone on stage. And yet there was no other way of putting it. As Captain of the Wight, he knew perfectly well that George Carey killed people. He did it with the full force of the law at his back as the Island’s chief magistrate.

  She was silent and in the dark Marlowe sensed she bowed her head. Her voice when it came was as soft as a breath. ‘Men with whom … men who have … men with whom I have lain in adultery.’

  Marlowe was surprised at her mealy mouthed choice of words. He had decided that Bet was Rabelaisian to her core. Perhaps she thought that he was not worldly enough to bear more earthy words. Perhaps she thought he was a Papist priest; he had posed as one before. He contented himself with a querying grunt.

  ‘I do not know whether you have heard the rumours, Master Marlowe, but I fear I am notorious. I am a woman who needs … affection. More affection than my husband has had at his disposal for some while. I thought he knew and had no complaints. It is not as though I have ever refused him. Not even when I have spent my day fornicating around the town. But … you don’t need to know my wicked ways. Only what I fear my husband may be doing. To the men I …’

  ‘Have lain with in adultery.’ Marlowe could not keep the smile out of his voice.

  ‘Exactly so. I see we understand each other, Master Marlowe.’

  ‘Words can say what we want them to, Mistress Carey. Let your phrase stand.’

  ‘I am discreet, I assure you. I never, for example, would ever lie with a man under this roof. Even if the assignation is made here, I always …’

  ‘Go outside, down Hollow Lane, for example.’

  ‘How did you know about that?’ She drew back in surprise.

  ‘I had the misfortune to meet with Sir Robert Dillington at the militia camp the other day. That man can impart more gossip in an hour than most men can in a lifetime. It seems to be a favourite story of his; the observance of one of the castle maids, as I understand it.’

  ‘Does he say it is me that the maid saw?’

  ‘No, simply that some cries and shrieks have earthly explanations. I presume it was Walter Hunnybun who was having the pleasure of your adultery on that occasion.’ It wasn’t a question. Marlowe had already guessed at it when Dillington was boring his way around the Militia camp.

  She gave a low chuckle, remembering. ‘Yes, indeed, Walter. Poor Walter.’

  ‘That does surprise me a little, Mistress Carey,’ Marlowe pointed out. ‘Farmer Hunnybun was not …’

  ‘Walter Hunnybun was as rough as a badger’s arse, if you will excuse the language,’ she whispered. ‘But he was inexhaustible. He was standing ready at any hour of the day or night and if I felt lonely, I only need go across a field or two and I could be in his bed, in a hedgerow or up against a wall, depending on my fancy, within minutes.’ She sighed. ‘I shall miss Walter.’

  Marlowe’s mind was clicking like an automaton. ‘So Matthew Compton was another of your inamorata, if I may put it so baldly.’

  ‘Scarcely baldly, Master Marlowe, but I thank you for your politeness. Yes, indeed. Matthew Compton had caught my eye. He was very well set up, you know, for a lawyer. He had … well, you don’t need to know that. But you may have noticed that he and Master Hunnybun have something else in common, besides my company in their beds.’

  ‘They are both dead.’

  She let out a long breath. ‘Correct, Master Marlowe. Indeed they are.’

  ‘That doesn’t mean much, Mistress Carey, in these uncertain times. Men die every day.’

  ‘They are not the first,’ she breathed.

  ‘Oh?’ Marlowe had not been on the Island long, but he sensed that Bet Carey had been warming the beds of the townsmen for a while since.

  ‘In the past year, four men of the town have been found dead. That is not counting Walter and Matthew. Three of the dead men were …’

  ‘Yes.’ It seemed fair to take that as read.

  ‘The fourth one I had considered, but I had not had need of him as yet. He only had one eye and I found it a little off-putting.’

  ‘So, you have concluded that your husband is making away with these men. Do you have any proof?’

  ‘Proof?’ Her voice rose and she instantly regretted it. If Sir George Carey really was watching her every move, she would put Kit Marlowe in mortal danger if she let this assignation be found out. ‘Proof, Master Marlowe?’ she whispered. ‘Even you must see that five men
dead in the last year, all from around the town and all of them partners in my crime of adultery is beyond any coincidence.’

  ‘I agree.’ Marlowe nodded in the dark, rustling the pillows. ‘That isn’t what I mean by proof. I mean, was your husband near the men when they died? Has he ever spoken to you, a single word, to let you know that he is aware of your behaviour? Has he—?’

  ‘I must stop you there, Master Marlowe. Your first question is easily answered. My husband would not need to be near anyone for them to die by his hand. He only has to say the word and anyone he wanted dead would be dead. It is as simple as that. As for speaking to me about it – well, we don’t speak much. Even if we did, I think he would keep his counsel on this. It may be that he gains pleasure from doing it.’ She fell silent for a moment. ‘Though I don’t think he is a cruel man.’

  Marlowe didn’t think so either. ‘How did the other men die?’ he asked.

  ‘Throttled,’ she said with a sob. ‘A horrible way to die. And no attempt to hide the bodies. They were all just … left there. For anyone to find. It was very cruel.’

  ‘Hunnybun and Compton were hidden,’ he pointed out.

  ‘A blocked drain is dealt with in hours,’ she said. ‘I can tell you are not a country boy, Master Marlowe. A freshly dug grave is also not much of a hiding place. It is bound to be discovered when the funeral is held, if not before.’

  ‘A fair point,’ Marlowe said, but his mind was elsewhere. Could it be that Bet Carey was seeing a link where there was none? Or rather, where there was a link but of another kind altogether? ‘Mistress Carey, these five, are they the only ones?’

  ‘The only ones?’ she hissed. ‘They have nothing else in common. One was a … I’m not sure what they are called. Sold oats and things like that.’

  ‘A grocer?’

  ‘No … corn chandler, that’s it. One kept an inn and the other was a draper. Walter Hunnybun was a farmer of course and you know that Matthew Compton was a lawyer. Five completely unrelated lives. And five is enough for any woman to bear, surely?’