‘No.’ He said it coldly. Then, turning, a bright smile on his face, he added, ‘no, his Honour would not wish to be troubled. Good servants do not run like mewling babes to nurse with sore knees. No, nor bound-up arms. They do their work, and they return with good news of it.’ He breathed out slowly. ‘You will say nothing to any man until we have the gold. Or the secure knowledge of it.’
Lewgar considered arguing. Instead, he said, ‘and so we run away. Is that the measure of it?’
‘Yes,’ said Marlowe cheerfully, a grin splitting his face. ‘I thought you would approve of that.’ His torn shirt fell to the floor and he stooped to retrieve the good Holland one he’d brought on the journey. ‘I noted,’ he said, his voice muffled, ‘good Gillingham said there are three of them. With servants. Rich folks.’
‘One a woman!’
‘Three of them and two of us. I am not a reckless gambler. I say we run. Discover what we can of this Howden.’ Patting down his shirt front, he began to lace it up. ‘I know men who know men who know men. A wealthy Howden, lately of London … we might find something of him.’
‘And when we do?’
Marlowe shrugged as he eased his arms carefully into his doublet. ‘He seeks what we seek, as you said. And he has a deeper purse than we and thus might learn more. Let him. And then we might … make his acquaintance.’ His face darkened and he crooked his elbow. This time he winced. ‘Ay, and then we might meet the creature indeed.’ He looked up. Smiled tightly. ‘At any rate, now we know where the treasure is not. It is not, as it should be, in the bowels of the ship which carried it across the sea. I am minded to discover where it is. And – what did you say? Earlier?’ His smooth brow knotted. ‘About the Sparrowhawk?’
‘What?’
‘Something being wrong with it. About the whole tale of it.’
Forced to think, Lewgar frowned too. ‘I – I think there is more to it than – than it sinking years since and being cast up.’
‘Ay. Strange happenings. Ay. In London, we might speak with a man who ought to know better of its history.’ Before Lewgar could question him, Marlowe belched and then went on cheerfully. ‘For now, Thomas, I suggest you dress. We can be on the road to London before dawn. Before this Howden – if it was he – can come for us again or try anything else. And I own I should like the cold air about me with haste.’
Lewgar pouted. ‘Before your head is torn apart from the inside.’
‘Heads are not torn apart from the inside by drinking, Thomas. It is stopping drinking that does it.’ He winked. His neat hands fluttered about his shirt collar, pulling it free of the top of his doublet and arranging it into a ruffle with his fingers.
Lewgar considered finding some riposte. Instead, he turned away to his own pile of clothes and began to dress.
8
The only bed worthy of the name in the old manor house was a surprisingly grand affair. It wouldn’t have been out of place in one of London’s better inns. Howton rolled over onto his side, sinking into the featherbed. It sat atop a wool-lined straw mattress, which sat atop another, which sat atop well-tightened strings. The frame of the bed was oak – no elaborate carvings, but it was a thing built to last. It even boasted a damask tester and thick curtains, making it a little room unto itself.
He slept alone.
He had bid Bess join him to take his sport earlier in the evening, but it irked him to have any other body tossing and breathing and nudging him. It reminded of his time at Oxford, when he had been forced to bed down with other students, even sometimes with his tutors. Those fine men who went on to enjoy good careers at court likely didn’t have to share beds other than with their wives when they chose to. Sir Francis Walsingham and old Burghley almost certainly enjoyed their gouty sleep in luxurious solitude. And Queen Elizabeth – she had never lain with anyone. He doubted if she even granted her most favoured ladies the boon of curling up against her withering hide.
He turned, sinking lower into the nest of feathers, curling and uncurling his toes until the woollen blanket folded itself under his feet. The matter of the two men – the two university men – kept intruding on his thoughts, pushing back sleep.
Who did they work for?
The story of the Sparrowhawk’s return had raged into London, igniting older tales about the vast treasure store supposedly lost with it. It was still current – it was still news – though talk had moved on to the coming war and the venture Raleigh had sent abroad since the Queen’s own men had returned to London claiming the vessel was an empty hulk.
Yet any man of sense might see that something about the lost ship didn’t hang together.
Hoards of stolen gold didn’t simply vanish.
Someone, somewhere, knew something. And any man might find out what that something was.
Again, he thought of the pair of interlopers. Did they work for someone who shared an interest in that gold?
He rolled over again, onto the cooler side of the bed, and inhaled deeply of the close, warm air of the tiny, curtain-walled chamber. It was useless trying to discover anything of the men. Doubtless they would keep their own counsel, at least until Fray Nicolas had the truth from one of them. Spaniards, it was said, had all manner of means to extract it; they were a nation of rack-masters and thumb-breakers. He burrowed under his blanket. The very thought was enough to chill a man.
He slowed his breathing, trying to think of nothing, of the void, of darkness.
It almost worked.
Thump-thump-thump.
No anger flared in him at the interruption. In truth, he had expected a knock at the door at some point in the night. Sighing, he wrenched himself up onto his elbows, and then his knees, and threw back the curtains at the foot of the bed.
‘Answer it, Bess,’ he hissed. ‘Admit him.’
The wench was curled up on a coffer below him. Rubbing sleep from her eyes, she rose, a dim figure in the poor light of the candle left burning on the bedchamber’s sideboard. ‘Wha?’
‘Answer the door, you brain-sick dolt! There is a knocking without!’
She got heavily to her feet and, brushing down her nightgown, she padded on bare feet to the door. The dull knocking began again as she felt about for the brass ring and pulled it inward.
Fray Nicolas stepped into the room, not acknowledging Bess. ‘Mr Howton,’ he said. He was anguished, or upset, or angry; his face remained passive, but his voice took on a scattering of Spanish gravel.
‘What news? You are alone? Come forth man, that I might see you better.’ Howton swung his legs over the low wooden bottom of the bed and sat on the warm coffer as his confessor strode in. ‘Well?’
‘They live,’ he said without preamble.
‘They live,’ echoed Howton. ‘Our creeping friends? Both?’
‘Yes.’
Howton took a breath. The air beyond his bed was smokier, heavier. The plain stone walls of the bedchamber gave off a whiff of dampness. Blinking, he asked, ‘how is this? What happened?’
Clasping his hands at the base of his stomach, demurely, like a maiden, Nicolas spoke. ‘I broke in upon their lodgings. I thought to find them asleep. As you said.’ An edge of criticism coloured this, drawing out Howton’s lips. ‘They did not sleep. One of them did not. He raised a cry. And the other rose to it.’ He paused, licking his own lips. ‘They are devils, señor. Mr Howton. Devils. With the mouths of demons. I – I struck at one. I drew blood. Yet he felt no pain. His language was of the foulest pit of hell.’
Howton felt confusion rise up in his throat, choking off speech. As he fought it, anger gripped him. ‘I see you do well enough with stripling lads, bound and helpless. Not so well, it seems, with stout and lusty Englishmen.’ Fear again took control. ‘Did they see you? Did they know you?’
‘I … the old man, perhaps, whose house it was. Perhaps he … I cannot say. I think not. It was dark. It was dark,’ he repeated, as though assuring himself.
‘Dark or not, they will raise the district. They will bring
men here, officers of the law.’ An image formed in his mind. It was not, surprisingly, of Tyburn or Smithfield. Nor was it of the Tower and its rack, or the hooded executioner sending up showers of sparks as he sharpened his blades in anticipation of inflicting the full horrors of a traitor’s death.
It was of a tree.
Howton’s mind turned backwards, ticking over the years, until he was a boy of ten, looking up at a great oak tree whose strong limbs spread up and out, as though in joy, in celebration. But they were straining as they did so. From each one was hanged a man, unhooded, every face bloating, tongues protruding.
Richard Howton was amongst them. To his son’s youthful mind, it had seemed as though the great tide of wrath Queen Elizabeth had unleashed against the north had washed him up and left him there, as a strong wave might leave bits of seaweed clinging to coastal shrubs. He wondered, not for the first time, why his mother had taken his face roughly in the calloused pads of her hands and forced him to look, slapping him when he turned away.
‘Look! Look what your father earned for his love of this realm!’
England was not kind to those its sovereign and her minions deemed traitors.
With both hands, he raked his fingers through his thatch of blonde hair. ‘We are undone.’ The whole thing seemed to hang as precariously as his father’s corpse had from that straining oak. Too many people, too many questions, too much attention. ‘We are undone!’ He looked at Bess, who had retreated to the sideboard and was refreshing the candle. ‘You, Bess, make our things ready to leave this place!’
‘Pray be calm,’ said the friar. Howton looked up at him, his eyes wide.
‘Calm? You have failed, Fray Nicolas. Failed! Worse, you’ve let these men know something is afoot!’
‘What can they know?’ Nicolas’s voice had returned to its usual unaccented English. It had taken on, too, a slow, hypnotic quality.
‘They can discover my name.’
‘I told you that you might use a false one.’
Howton flared. How dare this Spanish monk criticise him! ‘I,’ he said, sliding from the coffer, ignoring the chill of the floorboards and drawing himself up, ‘am Henry Howton. I am no creeping intelligencer. You said they are men down from Cambridge. What are they to me?’ He shook his head. His thoughts were rebelling against one another. ‘But – but they might know too much.’ He looked up again sharply. ‘Because you failed. Because you let them live to seek and search and cause us trouble.
To his surprise, Bess spoke. ‘Begging your pardon, sir, but should I begin packing away our things?’ He shot her a look. She swallowed, looking at the floor. ‘What shall we do, sir? What shall I do?’
Howton sniffed, clutching at the collar of his nightgown. He would shed the wench as soon as he returned to London, find himself a new one – one who knew when to hold her tongue and not think so much of herself. ‘We … we … I will not run wild in the night like a criminal. In the morning. Yes, in the morning we shall discover more of these creatures, discover what they plan to do now. Who they run to, report to.’
Nicolas gave a discreet little cough. ‘I think,’ he said, ‘that they plan to go to London.’
‘London?!’
‘I took the chance to watch from without. After I was … expelled … from the house. The old man got ready their horses. They came out a little afterwards, dressed. I heard them speak of the road back to the city.’
Howton considered this, rolling his tongue. ‘Not the magistrate of the shire. London. There is good fortune at last. We might all be for London.’
‘I think they shall get there before us. They doubtless have the devil’s wind at their backs.’
‘Bah!’ Howton waved this away with a hand. ‘We have their names, as they might have mine. And I shall return to London and find them there: Tyndall and Lewgar, two men lately come.’ Already, in his mind, he was sending Nicolas out, his purse full, to make enquiries at the city gates, at lodging houses, from alewives and tapsters and ostlers on the road in from the southwest. It was an easy enough thing to discover men in London if one had money enough to buy information, and King Philip might foot the bill. ‘I am weary of this too-small house and this village and these backwards, wretched people. There is nothing here. The fools here know nothing of any lost gold.’ A sudden thought struck him. He spoke aloud, but more to himself than the friar or the girl. ‘These men … if they have some greater master, some lordling or courtly creature … then, then we know that the treasure is real enough.’
‘We know it is real enough,’ said Nicolas. Howton looked up. The friar was still standing with his hands clasped. He relaxed them, transferring them behind his back. ‘His most Catholic Majesty King Philip has made clear that the Sparrowhawk raided one of his own vessels and stole its cargo. Of course it is real enough, stolen by the heretic queen’s pirates six years since.’
Howton made a little moue. ‘Ay,’ he conceded. ‘This is true enough.’
‘And we know what lay amongst that treasure. El Sol Dorado.’
‘Yes.’ He had tried not to let himself become too interested in that particular item, though it enticed him enough by its name. He didn’t even know what it was, whether a golden sun or anything else fashioned from gold. What he had allowed to draw his mind, what had seemed more tangible, was that the ship had supposedly carried all manner of treasures, from golden chalices to gold pieces to gold statues moulded by the barbarous heathens. The Spanish king could guard the secret of his mysterious treasure – for now. Henry Howton would have his share of the gold.
Yet still he was curious about what the old sovereign over the sea might value more than coffer upon coffer of plate and coin…
‘His most Catholic Majesty has placed much trust in you,’ said Nicolas.
Howton said nothing. Though he had first accepted Spanish money the year before, this was the first real action he had been called upon to take – and it went far beyond merely discovering whether armies were being mustered in which shires and what other preparations for war were being made.
‘I have no doubt,’ the friar went on, ‘that these heretical devils have heard of El Sol Dorado. It has been whispered of since King Philip first complained of the wicked piracy. Yet I think neither the men who have spirited the gold from that ship nor these devils who seek it know what it is they seek. I will make ready to leave.’
As Nicolas began backing towards the door, Howton stumbled forward. ‘But you know. You know what this great prize is. What is it?’
But the friar slid out of the bedchamber without answering, his head bent low.
You sneaking Spanish bastard, thought Henry Howton.
9
The warmth of spring was heavy in the air as they approached the uneven skyline of London. They came in from the south, through the scattering of scrubby fields in which apprentices dodged work to walk out with maids, and along the road to Bankside and Southwark. Towers and spires competed for attention, prodding upwards like needles stuffed haphazardly into a badly stuffed pin cushion. London had well and truly burst forth across the Thames; south of the river, houses, mansions, and inns had stacked floor upon floor, none too carefully. In the early afternoon sunlight, all stood out crisply. There was little wind and so the innumerable columns of smoke rose sedately to meet the clear blue sky.
Lewgar hated London.
The place never seemed to be at rest. They dismounted as soon as the crowd of houses and shops began to thicken, and with them the street. The overhanging galleries of those hastily erected upper floors were a danger to anyone who remained mounted. No sooner had they slid to the rutted mud of the road than people were upon them.
‘Like flies to a turd,’ said Marlowe, not troubling to keep his voice low.
‘In from the country, lads?’ asked a bosomy woman in her forties. She leered, bending forward. Some of her teeth were missing. ‘Lads’ hissed out with a few flecks of spittle. ‘Much to see. Much to do.’ Another woman was already trying to s
hove her out of the way, this one younger with artlessly applied white powder on her brow and cherry-red rouge on her cheeks.
‘You mind yourself, Madge Abell! They want none of you.’
‘Be gone, you lumpen trulls,’ croaked an old fellow, slouching over from a doorway, his palms up in supplication. ‘It’s service what these fine gentlemen be after. Eh? Eh, lads?’
The two women commenced shoving at each other, drawing catcalls from yet more strangers who crowded round. Faces, young and old, grinned, laughed, leered, spat, barked, hooted, jeered; hands were raised in fists, waved, clapped. Banging above heralded opening shutters and yet more heads appeared, hanging out, shouting.
‘Fight! Fight! Fight!’
‘A guide to streets, sirs?’
‘Kick ’er!’
‘Would you be wanting some ribbons for yer sweethearts, sirs? Every colour!’
‘You recreant strumpet!’
‘You ha’penny whore!’
Marlowe threw back his head and laughed, making his horse turn away. ‘I love this town,’ he said. ‘My apologies, my friends – we have come a ways. We need only a bed for a while.’ The dispute – the fight – between the two women had devolved further; they now circled one another, their fists balled at the sides of their patched, particoloured gowns. ‘Let us be gone from here.’ He gave Lewgar a wink and then, gripping his bridle, began moving his horse farther down the street, towards the river. Lewgar nodded, following.
When the bulk of Southwark Cathedral rose up on their left, and with only the echoing shouts of constables and women following them, they paused. It had been under a week since they’d fled Wembury – a quicker journey, though, than it had been down to the coast from the city. Each day, the roads seemed to dry a little more, become a little less treacherous, and Lewgar’s joints gave no protest, so used had he become to hard riding. Marlowe would never had admitted it, but Lewgar suspected fear had driven him onwards too. The man said nothing of their attack; nor did he excuse or even mention his drunkenness in the village. Instead, he had retreated into his overly familiar, overly friendly self.
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