Traitor's Storm

by M. J. Trow

  He stepped back on to the flags of the kitchen and stepped back into a vice-like embrace, an arm around his neck and a point digging into his kidneys through his doublet. A voice in his ear hissed, ‘Don’t try and get away. I will skewer you where you stand.’

  Marlowe raised his hands and said, equally quietly, ‘Let go of me and I won’t move.’

  ‘Do you think I am an idiot?’ the voice grated. ‘Mary!’ The voice was loud in his ear. ‘Come over here like a good girl and take this gentleman’s dagger.’

  Out of the corner of his eye, Marlowe saw Mary Sculpe come out from behind a press which did not quite fit the alcove in the corner. It would not be many more days before she would not fit beside it, because the gentle swelling Marlowe had seen when they first met was now frankly visible and she had taken to wearing her apron tied above the bump, with no attempt to hide it.

  ‘Mistress Mary,’ Marlowe said, as merrily as he knew how. ‘You are blooming, my dear.’

  ‘You know this man?’ the voice said in Marlowe’s ear.

  ‘Why, Harry,’ the girl laughed. ‘This is the gentleman I told you about, the one who was looking for you.’

  ‘Who are you?’ Hasler asked, his dagger still in the man’s back.

  ‘Christopher Marlowe,’ the poet told him. ‘And I can count among my friends Nicholas Faunt and Sir Francis Walsingham.’

  ‘Marlowe? Dear God!’

  The dagger left its place above Marlowe’s kidney but the arm was still tight about his throat. ‘I have been looking for you. Faunt and Walsingham were getting worried. They thought you might have … been hurt.’

  ‘Or gone over to Spain,’ Hasler said, releasing his grip and letting Marlowe fall forward.

  ‘Or that, yes.’ Marlowe rubbed his throat and turned to his man. The spy was tall and thin, with floppy hair; Marlowe could see how he would be attractive to women. But yet another one not on Bet Carey’s extensive list. Perhaps he had turned her down. Marlowe turned to the girl. ‘I have some bad news for you, I fear, Mistress Sculpe,’ he said formally.

  ‘Oh, if it’s just about father being dead, I know that,’ she said brightly.

  Marlowe blinked. ‘But we’ve only just fished him out of the water, down at the quay.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘But we put him there last night, didn’t we, Harry? Well, Harry did most of the putting. I can’t really do no heavy lifting, just now.’ She cupped her growing belly. ‘I’m ’aving a babbie.’

  Marlowe opened his mouth, closed it, thought and then spoke. ‘Congratulations to you both,’ he said.

  Mary looked at him, confused, and then laughed and nudged Harry Hasler. ‘You see what he’s done. He thinks you’re my babbie’s father.’

  ‘Aren’t you?’ Marlowe said, in some confusion himself.

  ‘No,’ Hasler said shortly. ‘I am not. But she is coming back with me to … Let’s just say over in the West Wight. I won’t be Faunt’s plaything any longer. I have a cottage and a pig and a modest income by way of inducement from John Vaughan – who took me for a Customs man, by the way. Mary can come and keep house for me. The baby will grow up strong on milk and honey …’

  ‘Not if all you have is a pig,’ Marlowe pointed out. He was no husbandman, but even he knew you didn’t usually get milk from a pig, no matter how tame the animal.

  ‘I am speaking in general,’ Hasler said impatiently. ‘Where was I?’

  ‘Milk and honey,’ Marlowe reminded him.

  ‘Yes. The baby will grow up strong on milk and honey and we will all live happily ever after.’

  Marlowe looked hard at the man. Had he lost his mind? ‘And if the baby’s father comes calling?’ he asked.

  ‘Then we will call the vicar, with bell, book and candle,’ Hasler said. ‘The baby’s father is dead.’

  ‘Like mine,’ Mary chipped in, folding her hands complacently over her stomach. ‘Both our fathers is dead. But only one man is dead, if you get my meaning, Master Marlowe?’

  Marlowe looked at her. The girl didn’t seem to mind that she was an orphan and also carrying her father’s child. ‘I … I’m sorry, Mary,’ he said softly. ‘I didn’t know.’

  ‘No reason why you should do, Master Marlowe,’ she said cheerfully.

  ‘If we’re being strictly accurate,’ Hasler said. ‘Mary has lost a father and a grandfather today. It was a fine old family custom, you might say.’

  Marlowe knew such things went on in country places, but somehow to meet it in broad daylight and to see the results in this bonny, happy girl was a little disconcerting. He beckoned to Hasler and they walked into the corner. Mary happily turned her attention to the kettle and poured some water on to some gruel in a pot on the side. She stirred it, singing quietly to herself and smoothing her stomach.

  ‘Master Hasler …’

  ‘Harry, please. If things had been different, we would have been friends, I think. Colleagues, at least. Sir Francis’s golden lads and all that.’

  ‘Harry. You do know she is mad, don’t you?’

  ‘As a tree, sadly. Keeping everything in the family will do that after a generation or two. She has been telling me. There hasn’t been anyone but an existing blood relation in this family since before Hal was on the throne … Hal the Sixth, that is.’

  ‘Did she kill him?’

  ‘She had a damned good try. Last night.’

  ‘Why now? Why not when he started … what he started?’

  Hasler shrugged. ‘I’m not sure. Last straw, perhaps. Her story is a little garbled. From what I could make out, he came past her and stroked her stomach and talked to it. Called it his little maid.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘I can’t tell if she was protecting the baby or was jealous. Either way, she hit him on the head with a skillet. I put the old bastard in the water, tied up in case he was still alive. I couldn’t find any signs of life, but you never know. Look, Marlowe, do you really need to talk to her any more? She hasn’t got many things of her own, but we were just getting them together to start back to my cottage.’

  Marlowe looked over his shoulder to where the girl still stood, stirring and stroking. He made up his mind. ‘Go, then. The sailors undid the ropes and hauled the body away on a hurdle. They won’t say a word – I would imagine that Master Sculpe won’t be missed. But what about you? I understand you are a bit of a one for the ladies. How will you manage, with just a mad girl for company?’

  Hasler laughed, a short bark with no humour in it. ‘Who told you that, Master Marlowe?’

  ‘I can’t remember. It seems to be the accepted rumour of choice.’

  ‘Let it be, then,’ Hasler said quietly, laying his hand on Marlowe’s sleeve.

  ‘Who sent the letter?’ Marlowe asked him.

  ‘Letter?’

  ‘The one in your chest upstairs. I found it.’

  Hasler shrugged. He knew such nosiness went with the territory in the Projectioner business. ‘I know of no letter.’

  Marlowe summoned up his years of learning by rote, of committing passages in Greek and Latin to memory. ‘“Tonight, my darling one,”’ he quoted. ‘“But be careful. He knows, I am sure of it. I long for the touch of your caress, the press of your lips on mine. My heart aches for you and my loins tremble. Three steps back and three steps fore.”’

  Hasler looked blank. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I’ve never seen or heard that. I don’t know anyone who would write me a letter like that.’ He brought his face closer to Marlowe’s so the projectioner could feel his breath warm on his cheek. ‘My … companions are not the kind of lads who are much of a fist with a pen. If you understand me. But,’ he added, in unconscious echo of the sailor on the quay, ‘Least said, soonest mended. Mary and I will both have to make sacrifices, I think. But it will serve. If you ever get tired of the game yourself, Kit – well, I hope you find happiness.’ He smiled sadly and went over to the girl, putting an arm around her shoulder and planting a chaste kiss on her head.

  Marlowe
watched for a moment, and then saw himself out.

  ‘How can you just sit there?’ Pedro de Valdez wanted to know. ‘Like frightened children?’

  Everybody except the Captain-General of the Ocean Sea was on their feet, screaming and shouting at him. His cousin Diego already had his dagger in his hand.

  ‘Gentlemen! Gentlemen!’ the Duke of Medina Sidonia did not raise his voice often, so when he did, people tended to listen. ‘I have not yet heard from His Majesty. It may be we will be going home; that there will be no Enterprise of England after all.’

  ‘You can’t believe that, Alonso,’ Juan de Recaldé said softly, shaking his head. A moment ago he had been on his feet too, in that little room in the fortress of San Anton overlooking the harbour at La Coruňa; on his feet because he was a hidalgo of Spain, and, like all of them, wore his honour on his sleeve. But he was also the first to sit down. He had been at sea for longer than any of them and he knew that Medina Sidonia’s caution made sense.

  ‘No,’ the Captain-General said solemnly. ‘No, I don’t.’

  ‘And every day we waste,’ Pedro de Valdez said, sitting down too, ‘El Draque and his fleet get stronger. This little upset of ours will reach England soon if it hasn’t already. They must be laughing in their caps.’

  ‘We’re under strength, Pedro,’ Medina Sidonia said. ‘We cannot cross swords with Drake until the lost ships arrive.’

  ‘What if they don’t arrive?’ Valdez asked him. ‘What if they’re at the bottom of Biscay or blown to the Azores? Felipe won’t smile on us then. And neither will God.’

  Silence hung heavily in the room. Then Medina Sidonia passed forward a document. ‘This,’ he said, ‘is an official minute, urging us to wait. I have already appended my signature. I would like you all to sign it too.’

  One by one they scratched their names with a quill – Juan de Recaldé, Francisco de Bobadilla, Diego de Valdez, Hugo de Moncada and the rest. Soon, there was only one signature missing.

  ‘All of you,’ said the Captain-General.

  Pedro de Valdez looked at them under sulky eyelids. Then he snatched the quill and wrote his name, though he would rather have torn the vellum in half. ‘War by committee,’ he growled. ‘Are we ancient Greeks that we fight like this?’

  There was a commotion on the fortress walls outside and the rapid thunder of drums. Men were shouting, whooping, running along the battlements and hugging each other. Medina Sidonia threw open the casement. ‘What’s the trouble, there?’ he shouted to an officer on the ramparts below.

  ‘It’s the Levant squadron, sir!’ the man called back, happiness etched on his beaming face. ‘And the Hulks behind them.’

  All the officers in the council chamber were on their feet again, the enmity of a moment ago forgotten. They were leaning out of the windows, whooping with everybody else and slapping each other on their backs. All that is except the cousins Valdez, who naturally kept their distance.

  ‘That, gentlemen,’ Medina Sidonia said, ‘is God’s miracle.’ He turned to Pedro de Valdez. ‘Now, Pedro,’ he smiled. ‘Now we can go to war.’

  The impetuous commander laughed and leaned far out of the window as the flagship of the Levant Squadron, La Regazona, butted its way into the harbour, her sailors hauling on ropes and little boats scattering out of her way.

  ‘Hola, de Bertendona,’ he shouted to the ship’s commander, although he knew his voice could not carry remotely that far. ‘Nice of you to drop in!’

  And the hidalgos of Spain laughed.

  TWELVE

  Howard had at last given Drake his head. The Lord Admiral had one of the most brilliant and the most insubordinate officers of Her Majesty’s Navy as his second in command and the fiery West Country man had been badgering his master to let him out of Plymouth for weeks.

  The latest missive from the Queen had reminded her cousin that he ought to be aware of an attack launched from Ireland. On that occasion the Lord Admiral had lost his patience altogether. He had slapped the luckless messenger around the head and did not bother to send the usual courteous written reply. ‘Tell Her Majesty,’ he bellowed after the retreating lackey, his ears still ringing, ‘that there is no such place as Ireland!’

  So Drake, with the wind turned, had hoisted sail and led his ninety ships, still only half-stocked, out into the Channel and on to a raid against Spain. One of the letters the Lord Admiral had been pleased to receive, this time from Francis Walsingham, was that a storm had pinned the Armada into La Coruňa and could Sir Francis Drake be sent with his hellburners. The Spaniards could not believe that El Draque’s lightning could strike twice in the same place. And in any case, it was not the same place. Last year Drake had singed the King of Spain’s beard at Cadiz. This time he’d burn the rest of him at La Coruňa.

  An exhausted trio threw themselves down in the captain’s quarters on the Bowe late that morning. Since darkness had fallen on the previous night, all three of them had been at Mead Hole, sounding the alarm and emptying the place of contraband. The tide was with them so those smugglers who could get away did so, striking east along the Hampshire coast, making for the inlets of the Itchen, anywhere away from the wrath of the Captain of the Wight. Denny’s Rat was safely moored in the creek at Wootton and Vaughan and Page had commandeered every wagon and pack horse they could find to bring the goods back to Vaughan’s wharves and warehouses, locking doors and stashing valuables under piles of sacking.

  One or two of the livelier inhabitants of the Hole had refused to budge at first. Men like that did not frighten easily and they were no strangers to the insides of gaols from there to the Indies. Let George Carey come calling; they would give him a bloody nose for his pains. John Vaughan had pointed out that there was always a time to cut and run. Now was that time. Give him a week, he said; ten days at most. After that they could all get back together again and it would be business as usual. Governors of the Wight had other things to worry about than a little smuggling and piracy.

  Edmund Denny poured them all a large Bastard and sank back on the Bowe’s cushions, grateful for their softness. For the last two hours, he and Vaughan had been rushing around the town, having various casual words with the shopkeepers, assuring them that whatever they heard in the coming days, it would be business as usual as soon as humanly possible. Most of them had taken it well, but Hallett the butcher stood outside his stall and yelled at Vaughan, ‘You rascal, you rogue, you knave, you thief.’ Vaughan had been too tired to remonstrate with the man. He just swung back his fist and knocked him out.

  ‘We’ve got a little problem.’ Thomas Page clinked his cup against the other two.

  Vaughan groaned. ‘I thought we had covered our backs pretty well,’ he said.

  ‘Marlowe’s been sniffing around. Asking after you.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘And that’s not all. He found a body.’

  Vaughan and Denny paused in mid-swig. ‘A body?’ Denny said. ‘Where?’

  ‘Just out there,’ Page said, nodding towards the stern. ‘In the water.’

  ‘Anyone we know?’ Vaughan asked.

  ‘Old Sculpe.’

  ‘Drunk, was he?’ Vaughan continued to sip his wine, looking around for his pipe. ‘It’s been a long time coming, if you ask me.’

  ‘No, he was murdered,’ Page said.

  Vaughan looked at the others. ‘And Marlowe found him?’

  ‘So my man Edwards says.’ Page shrugged.

  ‘Sirs!’ a panicky voice sounded from up on deck. ‘You should come and see this. You won’t believe it.’

  All three got to their feet, aching and tired. Vaughan led the way up the steep steps and out on to the quarter deck. Edwards was pointing wordlessly now up the river. People were hurrying to the bank, chattering excitedly. Sailors, fishermen and bargees were standing in their boats or on the jetties as though frozen in some Ice Sea, unable to move. A Spanish pinnace was churning its way towards them, the men on board furiously shortening sail and throwing a heavy anchor
over the bows and another from the stern. The rattle of the chain was deafening and coming closer at an alarming rate. Standing on the shattered bowsprit and holding on with only a casual regard for his safety, his hand on his hip and his head held high, was Sir George Carey, the Captain of the Wight. The Captain of El Comendador.

  ‘Oh, and by the way,’ Page said quietly, ‘I forgot to tell you. There are twenty dagos in the Bridewell. Makes you proud to be an Englishman, don’t it?’

  ‘Edwards,’ Vaughan snapped, ‘can you write?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ the man told him.

  ‘Come with me. I want you to take some letters to some gentlemen of the Wight.’ He scowled at the crowds cheering and clapping as the pinnace came to a stop on the bend of the river. ‘It’s time we all did something about Georgie Carey.’

  ‘What the bloody ’ell’s been going on ’ere?’

  Nobody could miss the arrival of Martin Frobisher. He swept in to the Lord Admiral’s quarters at Plymouth like a hurricane, throwing his sword to one lackey, his pistol to another.

  ‘Good evening, Sir Martin,’ Howard of Effingham sighed. He had been dreading this moment for weeks and it came as no surprise at all that Francis Drake was on his feet already, scowling at the bluff Yorkshireman and taking the man’s mere presence as a personal insult.

  ‘Drake.’ Frobisher ignored the Lord Admiral completely. ‘I’ve just heard you’ve been on a damn fool reconnaissance. Have a nice sail out to Biscay, did you? Got some fresh air, I shouldn’t wonder.’

  Drake crossed to the man and they stood almost nose to nose, the man from the north and the man from the west. ‘What’s your point?’ Drake asked.

  ‘My point,’ Frobisher said, as though to the fleet idiot, ‘is that you risked losing ninety ships of the line for no bloody purpose whatever.’

  ‘I could have sunk their Armada in Corunna,’ Drake grated, his Devon vowels more obvious the more annoyed he got.

  ‘Yes, and I could ’ave flown t’moon if I’d got wings!’ Frobisher bellowed. He was becoming more Yorkshire too. The pair were almost speaking different languages.