The Queen's Gold: A Christopher Marlowe Spy Thriller

by Steven Veerapen

  And so they all passed up the glistening cobbles of the reeking New Fish Street, on to Gracechurch and to Bishopsgate Street. At Bishopsgate itself they left the old city without check or let, and passed the grim, blank walls of the Bedlam. The thatch, plaster, and slate press of houses fell behind, replaced now with scattered dwellings and a series of flat, open fields, where city folk would wander on their days off, pretending to be swains and shepherdesses. A short distance into the semblance of the countryside, which at least boasted sweeter airs, the crowd snaked westward along a narrower street bordered by a tumbledown wall. A short distance along it, they converged around a tall, whitewashed polygonal building with a thatched roof, which stood a stone’s throw from a jumble of dilapidated buildings left over from some old papist priory or abbey. A flag hung limp on a staff set high on one wall, and some enterprising people had set up stalls hard against the foot of the building. As he approached it, he slowed his pace, mindful of not catching up with Marlowe. Thankfully, those ahead had begun shifting forward in clusters. As he waited, Lewgar looked up, over the low fences and trees which lined the lanes and streets, and the few red-tile roofs. Not five minutes away another theatre, similar in structure, rose above them, as though aggrieved that it had competition.

  So this, he thought, was the new world of the great playhouses.

  He had to admit, as he moved towards The Curtain, that it was impressive. It didn’t look particularly grand, but it did look permanent, for all he knew that Plato had condemned poesy-making players and poets as idle, fanciful creatures better banished from an ordered society. The movement slowed as people began filing towards the tall, rectangular entrance. A fellow was collecting their money just shy of it. Lewgar cursed, peeping out to ensure that Marlowe was still ahead of him and fumbling at the same time to check for his purse. Relief blossomed as he felt it, still tied securely to his belt. Once the pedlars had disappeared through the shadowy doorway, he grudgingly handed over a penny himself. The hard-faced collector took it without looking at him and said, ‘pit.’

  ‘What?’

  The man looked up, his lip jutting. ‘Penny. You stand in the pit.’ Lewgar gave him a blank look. ‘Ugh. Follow them men with the packs.’ He turned to the folk who were next in line. Lewgar’s penny had already disappeared into an unglazed ceramic box hanging around the fellow’s neck; his hand was already out for the next patron’s coin. Lewgar shuffled on, giving no thanks, already feeling like a bumpkin.

  Here was danger.

  Through the encircling outer hallway, he emerged into an open space – presumably the pit – with a packed earth floor. On all sides, railed galleries rose on each floor above. Already these were filled with faces, most of them in good, feathered hats and headdresses. The pit, too, was already dense with people and still filling, its stench heating up, becoming sour and musky and wild.

  But he had no idea where Marlowe had gone.

  Slowly, he began moving around the edges of the chamber, keeping one hand against the wall. It was not until he’d got halfway around on the left side that he spotted him; he exhaled relief. Marlowe half-turned, and Lewgar hopped back, pulling his hat low.

  He was looking for someone.

  Ducking behind a pair of chatting women, Lewgar watched as Marlowe began purposely picking his way through the knots of people – towards a pair of thickset brutes, one of whom bore a scar running from the corner of one eye to the edge of his lip.

  Lewgar swallowed. He had heard that Walsingham’s men – that anyone involved in intelligence work – were dangerous, cruel creatures, used to working with the residue of society. It was almost pleasing to see it confirmed.

  And yet – damn him – Marlowe passed the pair of rogues without pausing, without even a look in their direction. He removed his hat as he skipped along and made instead for someone else.

  At first, Lewgar missed the man entirely. Whoever he was, Marlowe’s quarry, he was utterly unremarkable – a dry fellow of middling height, in a plain woollen cap. His features, too, were perfectly regular and forgettable, and he might have been any age. Lewgar frowned.

  He moved gingerly through the crowd himself, wondering how close he might get without discovery. That, he decided, was not close.

  Something made him pause, still a good distance away, but close enough to see what passed if he darted his head from side to side.

  Little Marlowe had changed; he even held himself differently before his unobtrusive new friend. He was, it seemed, begging for something, requesting something, with his head bowed and his hands clasped before him, as if in supplication. For his part, the dull stranger seemed uninterested.

  Lewgar edged closer, turning his head, willing himself to hear something over the echoing, excited chatter of hundreds of voices. It was useless. After a moment, the stranger turned his back on Marlowe and stepped away, disappearing into the crowd. Marlowe obliged his stalker by crying out – ‘please!’ followed by something that sounded like, ‘Mr Poole!’ or ‘Mr Poley!’

  And then he stared after the departing Poole or Poley in anguish, ran a hand through his thick hair, and then jammed his hat back on his head.

  What had just happened?

  A trumpet blast filled the air, and all heads turned to the stage, which jutted into the pit. Up there, a lean young fellow lowered his instrument, held up one hand, and the crowd fell silent. ‘The Queen’s Men,’ he announced, ‘are pleased to present their own The Seven Deadly Sins, and may it teach and delight you all.’ Some applause bounced around the room as the trumpet was blown again.

  Lewgar was interested neither in being taught or delighted. He glanced back at Marlowe. The fellow was still there, looking at the stage now. In profile, a tear was discernible, running down his cheek like the roguish man’s scar.

  As quietly as he could, Lewgar slipped through the crowd, ignoring the whispered curses at his passage, and left The Curtain, still unsure as to what he had witnessed.

  10

  ‘You have discovered them!’ Henry Howton beamed.

  He, Bess, and Fray Nicolas had returned to London. On the road, they had heard that two men had passed through several towns; some they had stayed in. Yet they had always been ahead, always elusive, whether by chance or design. They had lost the trail entirely on reaching Farnham in Surrey; between there and London, they had heard nothing of a pair of young men bound for the city.

  Upon reaching Southwark in the early evening, he had stopped to rest the horses at a coaching inn, The George, and sent the friar out to relight the cold trail, checking every inn for news of two new men: The Queen’s Head, The Surre, The Bull, The Catherine Wheel, The Three Widows, The Old Pick-my-Toe. And The Tabard. God bless The Tabard. He had begun to worry – to worry that either the two fellows who might know his name and his intent had fled to some master’s house, or that they had gone on through London to Cambridge.

  But no.

  ‘Yes,’ said Nicolas. ‘They have taken a room at The Tabard. The man who owns it there is most willing to part with information for a price. Only the devil Lewgar gave his name. But the other lodges with him.’

  ‘They were there? They lie there now?’

  ‘No. The man said that they had left.’

  ‘Damn!’

  ‘But only for a short while, he thinks. Perhaps in search of better fare. They did not leave with their packs nor their horses.’

  Howton bit at his lip. ‘Mmph.’

  ‘Do you wish me to … visit with them there? To lie in wait for their return?’

  ‘No,’ said Howton. He had considered this on the road. What he wished to know above all else was who these two men worked for. Then, then he might know how better to deal with them. It would be a great risk, he knew, to act hastily when they might now be in close contact with some powerful patron. Ideally, he would separate one from the other and wring answers from him. Yet it was too dangerous to do anything so near to London. He did not even wish to ride over the bridge and return to his own
house on Thames Street, though he’d sent the few servants he’d taken to Wembury ahead to sweeten it – not yet, not until these loose ends had been tied up. He knew well enough that half his domestic servants were likely planted in their grubby positions by Elizabeth’s Protestant ministers – or at least that they’d happily take the coins of the lurking spies who fished for intelligence. The sons of Catholic traitors were never left completely alone. Thankfully, he had never been called upon by his Spanish masters – and nor would he have been stupid enough – to strike up any correspondence with the Scotch queen or her circle of dreaming admirers. All of his letters from Spain were securely locked away in a sealed coffer at home. Nevertheless, the fewer eyes that noticed that he was engaged in something the better.

  ‘I might procure us a room in that inn,’ said the friar.

  Howton fixed him with a look, and then let his eyes wander about the taproom of The George. It was a large, airy place, but the tables were undressed and some of the patrons – old men, mostly, splattered with road muck – looked as though they had never seen a bath but had been picked clean by lice instead. As they rolled dice, their competing moans of anguish and joy made his lip curl in distaste. He shot Bess a look; she was standing, her hands behind her back, ready to take his tankard to be refreshed. He turned his attention to that tankard, looking into its murky depths. His nose wrinkled. The place was beneath him. The Tabard, a Southwark inn, would be beneath him as well. After the succession of provincial houses he had been forced to use on the road, he could not bear another grubby inn.

  ‘Is there no other place? A place more fitting.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Nicolas.

  Howton looked up, surprised – impressed, even, though loath to admit it. ‘Well?’

  ‘Close to this Tabard. There is a gaol.’

  ‘What? Do you jest?’

  Nicolas raised a palm. ‘By the gaol, it seems, there is a finer lodging house. The Three Brushes. For gentlemen of means. From its windows, you might see who comes and goes from the place these devils have chosen to practice their evil craft.’

  Howton ignored this. The tiresome confessor had become obsessed with the idea that the two men who sought King Philip’s lost gold were witches or demons or devils. He didn’t bother to argue. There was no more point disputing with a devoted son of Rome than there was with a Puritan. All he wished, at present, was to know more of the damned interlopers. ‘Bess, fetch the horses.’ She gave a bob before moving away. He watched her gait – surprisingly graceful, she’d become, under him – as she left the taproom. Still he had not decided how to be rid of her; she knew more than was good for him.

  ‘Well, Fray Nicolas. Let us see this finer lodging house.’ The man gave a sharp incline of his head. ‘And that was well done of you,’ he belched, feeling expansive. ‘A sign from God, surely, that these men are to be put down.’

  ***

  The Three Brushes was much like a good-sized mansion. This time, Fray Nicolas took the horses off to the stables at the rear and Howton entered it with Bess. Rather than a common taproom, inside its stone portico – the rest of the place was of pink-washed plaster and red tile – a steward waited in a small, cosy antechamber. He asked Howton’s name and business. The former he gave freely, the latter he dodged with a handful of coins. Thereafter, they were led through a well-dressed and wainscoted hall, which bore on its far wall a small portrait of the Queen set in a gilt frame, up a carpeted flight of steps to a hallway, and into a bedchamber with a window – helpfully – overlooking the street.

  ‘Might I bring you anything?’ asked the steward. Howton waved him away. He started to go but, in the doorway, stopped and coughed, a fist bunched to his lips. ‘I regret,’ he said, ‘that we do not allow women.’ Howton turned and rolled his eyes to the ceiling. Up there, ironically enough, were carved and painted in gold leaf Queen Elizabeth’s arms. Bess backed against a wall, bumping a painted cloth, her head bent.

  ‘The wench will not be lodging with me,’ he said. A perfect means of being rid of her, if not silencing her.

  ‘Very good, sir.’ With a deep bow, the steward backed from the room, drawing the door closed as he went.

  ‘Sir,’ began Bess, ‘I – I – where should I go?’

  ‘Be quiet,’ he said. ‘You might … you might go back to my house.’ Or back to the gutter, he thought. The bedchamber of The Three Brushes was too fine for her anyway; perhaps he might pick up a woman of quality, fit enough to be a bedfellow. The bed itself was a carved oak tester, far finer than the one he had slept in at the old house in Wembury. Its canopy and hangings were a rich forest green and its linens pure white. Doubtless the featherbed was stuffed with fine, soft down.

  He padded across the thick carpet, enjoying the spring of it, and went to the window. It was glazed, a luxury, though with horn rather than glass. Opening it, he looked out across the street. There stood The Tabard, looking stale and run-down by comparison. He wondered whether Lewgar and Tyndall had fled it to speak his name to whoever commanded them. It seemed unlikely. For a while he watched people busily move up and down the street. Most of them were returning from the bridge side – women in short black hats set at jaunty angles, laded with cloth-draped baskets. A maid staggered in the opposite direction, uncovered pails of milk in each hand.

  ‘Go and fetch me something to drink,’ he said, still watching the world go by. ‘Some wine.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Bess.

  ‘And some bread and butter. Manchet.’

  A little ‘oh,’ from her turned him, reluctantly, from window. As Bess left, Fray Nicolas was coming in. The pair did an awkward little dance before she backed away, circling around him to flee.

  ‘The horses are stabled,’ said the friar.

  ‘Good. I can see the lodging house from here. This place was well chosen.’

  Fray Nicolas bent his head in acknowledgement of the praise. And then he looked up. ‘A great shame that we must lie beneath the false arms of the pretended queen. The great red-headed thief. The pirate. The –’

  ‘Quite. Well, God willing, she shall be toppled soon enough. By God Himself.’ He added. For effect, he crossed himself. The gesture felt affected, and he regretted it. He doubted very much that displays of piety for a mad Spanish monk would hasten the old woman’s heart giving out or encourage a wave of disease to take her off. She would die in good time, soon enough, and, as the world now accepted, without issue.

  ‘And so, these creatures who chase his most Christian Majesty’s gold … when they return?’

  ‘When they return,’ echoed Howton, ‘we must divide them. I wish to know how much they know. We might profit by it.’

  ‘They might have learned much by their sorcery. Any knowledge they possess is wickedly come by.’

  ‘Quite,’ said Howton again. An idea he had been toying with began to form. He took a breath and moved to the room’s single carved chair. Easing down onto it, he said, ‘we are near enough to London. Near enough for any … difficulties … to be made dangerous. I fancy it might be no easy thing to be rid of a troublesome body. Not like in the country.’ His tongue darted over his lips. ‘There are no quiet stretches of sand and meadow here.’

  ‘There is the river,’ offered Nicolas.

  ‘Ay. And I doubt any man’s chances carrying a corpse through an innyard, up a High Street, and out to that stinking boatyard without causing a rout.’

  ‘Perhaps … in the night…’

  Howton tutted. ‘No.’ Neither Southwark nor London ever went completely to sleep. They rattled and snored, each with one eye open, when night fell. ‘I will hazard no danger attaching to my name. Not here. Not with the eyes of so many peeping. Yet,’ he went on, leaning back in the chair, ignoring its unforgiving hardness, ‘there are other ways. Men die often enough in this town.’ And women too, he thought. ‘Daggers in the guts, strikes about the head when purses are cut.’ He shrugged. ‘Brawls and broils. Every day, I should imagine.’

  ‘I am no
common brawler.’ Fray Nicolas drew up his chin and crossed his arms. His indignant breathing flared his nostrils, whispering in the air between them.

  ‘No. I didn’t say you were.’ He resisted the urge to point out that the last time he had set the confessor upon the two men, they had beat him back and he had returned like a mewling child, complaining of their supposed devilry. He had no idea how far he could push Fray Nicolas without offending their master across the sea. It was said that King Philip was almost insanely pious in his greying days. ‘Yet there are filthy urchins and cutthroats enough. Especially south of the river. This place is a den of the same.’ He smiled as the friar’s brows drew together. ‘It is as easy, I think, to buy a murderer in Southwark as it is to buy a capon.’

  ‘You would have me–’

  ‘For the good of King Philip and the true faith, Fray Nicolas, I would have you find some low, foul creature of the town. Enjoin him – with a few pennies, you understand – enjoin him to follow these two men. And to do his trade. A dagger thrust, some blood spilled … a robbery. He might have the boon of keeping whatever he can steal. But he must follow them first, see where they go, to whom they speak. And then, if it pleases him, he might make off with one and leave the other to you, to be asked some questions. What have they discovered and how? Who has charged them with seeking King Philip’s stolen treasures?

  ‘All must look like ill fortune – a sudden assault, a man dead and robbed, and his friend … well, whichever is the weaker, I hope, will be left to our mercies. We can settle with him when we have better groped his mind.’

  He drummed the fingers of one hand on the slick, rounded arm of the chair, well pleased with his plan to eliminate and separate. He only hoped that it might be put into action with speed, before the fellows could do him a bad turn.

  ‘I shall go presently and find us just such a creature,’ said Nicolas, bowing shortly. He began to retreat but paused, one hand out for the door handle. ‘And if the creature should fail?’