The Queen's Gold: A Christopher Marlowe Spy Thriller

by Steven Veerapen

  Raleigh lowered the page, his lips trembling with something like anger. Lewgar swayed on his knee. After a whispered conference with the secretary, Raleigh rose. ‘Come with me. Now.’

  He began to step around the carved chair. Groans rose from the dozens of men lining the hall. Raleigh pivoted at the hip, his face furious, and silence fell. ‘Come,’ he said again, hooking a finger.

  Lewgar and Marlowe followed, stepping up onto the polished wood dais and around behind the throne. A curtained passageway was carved into the stone wall. Drawing aside the blue velvet, Raleigh stepped through it, more gold glinting off his shoe buckles. Beyond, a curving stone staircase led upwards. The three men proceeded to the top, climbing what appeared to be one of Durham House’s towers. Another door met them at the top, and they stood a moment under the heady, invisible cloud of the knight’s perfume.

  ‘In here,’ said Raleigh, opening it and stepping through.

  Inside was a surprisingly large office, furnished with scientific objects – a globe in a golden frame, a scope, a small still – and lined with sideboards full of books. A single large window was cut into the thick wall, admitting the fishy tang of the Thames and giving a view out over the haphazard roofs of Whitehall. On the whitewashed wall was hung a single painting: a bizarre scene of two nut-brown men with hair glossy and blue-black as a raven’s wing, dressed as honest English gentlemen.

  Raleigh caught him gawping and pouted. ‘My late guests. Wanchese and Manteo. As you see, they were well pleased to dress as Godly men. Not savages.’ He spat the word. Sensing the rebuke, Lewgar lowered his lashes and his head.

  ‘Did they come to understand our tongue?’ asked Marlowe.

  Raleigh shot him an angry look. ‘You would do well – what is your name?’

  ‘Gillingham, sir.’

  ‘You would do well to learn a little of your friend here. Hold your tongue in my presence unless I bid you wag it.’

  Marlowe bowed his head. Lewgar could see the frown twisting his features, but thankfully he said nothing.

  With the proper order restored – with Raleigh comfortable as the dominating presence in the office room – he smiled a nasty, humourless smile. After a long exhalation, he said, ‘Yes. My man Harriot gave them a sound education. Good Manteo came to speak and understand well enough. The other, Wanchese was less … he did not … he, I think, was well pleased to return. London did not agree with him.’ Lewgar looked up at the painting again. He did not know which was which, but one had been depicted smiling placidly and the other was sullen, staring downwards at the splash of green which made up the grass they stood on. It was an unsettling image. ‘My man White, the painter, did a very good likeness. He, too, has sailed out with the voyage. How he will fare with the mariners and their tales of water dragons and beasts, I can say less.’

  Mariners, thought Lewgar. An idea – a question – began to form.

  ‘Well,’ said Raleigh. ‘I wish to know what brings you to me.’ He was looking at Lewgar. ‘Well?’

  ‘Sir Francis Drake,’ said Lewgar quickly. ‘At the Erber. He has little time for scholars. He sent us.’

  Raleigh’s eyes contracted a fraction. Lewgar felt he could see his mind working, turning over, forming questions. ‘You say you are scholars.’

  ‘It sounds like a great design, this setting foot in the New World,’ said Marlowe, his words tumbling. ‘A great fillip sent to the Spanish.’ The three white men all gave suitably dark looks at the word. ‘I understand that the Spaniard makes less a good Christian colony of the Americas than he plunders them. Ay, and like a rascally brute tearing at an innocent virgin’s maidenhead.’

  Be quiet, thought Lewgar, feeling himself colour at the bawdy language.

  ‘Hold your tongue,’ said Raleigh. He sniffed again, fixing Marlowe with a look. ‘Yet I think you are less scholars with an interest in spreading God’s word in the New World than … like the Spaniard … young men interested in gold.’ Lewgar noticed that Raleigh still had the torn page in his hand. He waved it now. ‘What is the truth of this? What do you seek and why?’

  Marlowe gave a hesitant, resentful look before pasting on a smile. ‘We discovered it, as we said, sir, at Mortlake.’ Raleigh shrugged. ‘We have heard – Sir Francis has heard – that there is gold enough in the New World. Eluding the Spaniard. A great city of it. El Dorado. Do you…’ Marlowe gave a pointed look at the wall, towards the painting of the natives. ‘Have any of you heard of such a thing?’

  Raleigh shrugged. ‘Naturally. Tales. El Dorado.’ He pronounced it Spanish-fashion. ‘The Golden One. It refers to a prince who is clothed in gold. Who rules sovereign over a city of gold.’

  Lewgar saw Marlowe’s eyes widen in something like excitement.

  Raleigh, smiling, wiped it away. ‘A fable.’

  ‘What?’ asked Marlowe. It came out sharply; Lewgar tried to give him a warning look.

  Raleigh’s brows drew together. ‘Mind. Your. Tongue.’ The anger melted away. He sighed. ‘A fable. The Spanish searched for it, of course. Back in our Queen’s father’s time. And I understand German adventuring men have sought it too. A whole great, rich empire of gold they sought. And ever since they have roamed the Orinoco and the mighty Amazon, looking, looking. And nothing. I believe the Spanish governors search even now. They look in vain.’ His tone brooked no argument.

  ‘Why, sir?’ asked Lewgar. ‘Pardon me. But why in vain?’

  Raleigh looked to be deciding whether to rebuke him. Ultimately he gave a shrug. ‘They have no map, no charts. Only bruits of such a place.’

  ‘Have you heard word of any such chart?’ This was Marlowe.

  ‘Damn you, no. No! What is your interest in this?’ Raleigh waved the paper. ‘What has set you upon this damned tale? Speak – you seem able and willing enough. Speak!’

  Marlowe cleared his throat and had the wit to keep his head bowed. ‘A simple interest, sir. I … I own that the rich tales of precious metals stir the mind even of two fellows of wit and learning. We thought we might discover the truth of this fable.’

  ‘The truth! From the stink of London you think to learn the truth of El Dorado.’ Raleigh’s sneer was deep, boiling with contempt. ‘And you thought you might dazzle me and win my favour with fond tales and promises.’ Both men remained silent. ‘Your scholarship, your interest in my late guests – this was all a false colour to learn if I might help you discover gold?’ He put his hands on his slim hips. ‘My Mr Manteo was most clear that there is no gold on his native shores. He would not have had us ravage his land in search of it. This I understand well enough.’ He smiled. ‘I have sent men to the Americas – ay, and women – to spread the gospels in the Queen’s name. Not like evil Spaniards, with the promise of fortune beaming from their eyes.’

  ‘Yet…’ began Marlowe.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘There is gold enough for the Spaniard.’

  ‘Hmph. Ay, the southern men. Those in the lower Americas. We learned of our guests that the southerners think gold to be the tears and sweat of the sun. The creatures there worship it.’ He made a circular motion with a long, graceful, gloved finger. ‘Kìzis, they call it. Sun.’

  Lewgar shivered at Raleigh’s tossing out of the heathenish word. His gaze fell again upon the painting of the natives. Though their doublets and breeches were of good, brightly coloured quality – silken, perhaps even sarcenet – there was something unpleasant about their dress, too. It should, he knew, have pleased him to see unfortunate Godless heathens brought to good order. But it didn’t. It occurred to him that they were making a mockery of English clothing rather than honouring it, being civilised by it. It fit them as ill as loin cloths might fit an English mariner or colonist. And to have them painted, as great men and women might be set up in paint…

  Mariner.

  ‘Did your good Mr Manteo know anything of this El Dorado? Had he heard?’ Marlowe, apparently unwilling to give it up, spoke to Raleigh without any attempt at civility or submission, draw
ing Lewgar’s eyes. ‘Or the other good fellow painted there?’

  Raleigh scowled. ‘Do you know the secret pathways and hidden streets of Castile? Or the Barbary Coast?’

  ‘I might,’ said Marlowe, staring directly at him, ‘if I had studied a map.’

  ‘There are no maps. No trusted ones.’ Raleigh’s voice had turned to steel. ‘The southern savages have no art of writing, sir. They are without letters – or any marks we can read. They are steeped in backwards ways.’

  ‘Good Sir Walter,’ said Lewgar, his voice cutting through the ice in the room, ‘might you be so good as to tell me, are any of Sir Francis’s men from his last voyage sailing with you? His mariners?’

  ‘I think,’ said Raleigh, one eyebrow twitching, ‘that Sir Francis would know that. Perhaps he chooses not to share the Queen’s secrets with grasping, gold-mad scholars.’

  ‘He wishes to be reminded,’ said Marlowe, smiling.

  ‘Heh.’ Raleigh’s anger had been replaced by a grudging kind of wonderment. It was plain he now wished to be rid of his guests. But he kept their paper clutched possessively in his own hand.

  ‘I only wonder,’ said Lewgar, ‘how your artist and your scholar – landsmen – how they might fare at sea. Amongst mariners.’

  ‘Oh, you are thinking of enterprising at sea, are you?’ smiled Raleigh, unkindly, his pale eyes wandering up and down each of them.

  ‘Yes,’ said Lewgar. The lie tasted sour and hung in the air.

  ‘Well, mariners are a clannish lot.’ His nose wrinkled in distaste. ‘I bid them welcome to my late enterprise, those who came back on the Golden Hind and set up in London. Sent my men down to the docks in the city with promises of good pay and fair justice if they should join my own voyage.’ His voice turned petulant. ‘They would not serve my turn. Loyal men, each knowing the other. Ay, they’ll remain loyal until Sir Francis takes his own adventure. Sailing in the summer, is he not?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Marlowe.

  ‘Yes. Then I suggest you go with him. Learn of mariners what a mariner’s life is. Forget lost cities of gold and apply your learned minds to what England might bring to the New World. Means of farming and Christian teaching. Not what you might take from it. I warn you: all else is fond fantasy of enrichment. Yes, and better that you apply yourselves to cosmography and the mathematics if you wish to earn money. You are dismissed, gentleman. Go from me.’

  Twilight was already thick in the air by the time they were released, bowing, from Sir Walter Raleigh’s reluctant company. When they had their horses and were leading them from the Strand down towards the triple arches of Temple Bar, Marlowe, who had turned taciturn, spoke.

  ‘The man is lying. He kept our paper, did you note that?’

  Lewgar found it hard to disagree. He had the impression that Raleigh did know something. The knight might even have been pressing them to see if they revealed anything of their own mission and its progress. ‘He was … mighty, in his ways.’

  ‘An arrogant and haughty creature. Puffed up,’ said Marlowe, inflating his cheeks for emphasis. ‘He believes in El Dorado. He was hoping to see if we mentioned the Sparrowhawk, El Sol Dorado. Did you mark how he bristled at talk of maps and charts?’

  Lewgar said nothing to this. Privately, he thought that Marlowe was letting his fixation on what he’d decided to be the truth colour his perceptions.

  Silence drew out as they passed under the heavy shadows of the gatehouse and emerged on the still-busy Fleet Street. After a deep breath, Marlowe said, ‘it takes imagination to be a man of adventure. I think Sir Walter Raleigh has it and feigns a lack of it. But why … but why… Doubtless he knows something of El Sol Dorado too. He spoke of the place – El Dorado itself. He knows. A whole city fashioned of gold, all glistering and girt about with precious stones.’

  ‘A tale told by mariners,’ said Lewgar. ‘To win them another mug of beer for the telling of it.’

  Marlowe ignored him. ‘He knows and he wished to know what we knew… But why…’

  Lewgar let him ramble on. His eyes caught the rough wall of a building next to a tavern from which hung a sign with a painted abbot’s mitre. On the wall was scrawled chalk graffiti, some of it religious fiddle-faddle: ‘ye pope is ye antichrist’; ‘Gods wroth uponne us’. The rest was local and apt to keep the civic and ecclesiastical courts busy: ‘Taylor ys an cuckole’; ‘Robertes be a thief and thys we swear’. Such artists would soon find themselves hauled before the courts – and rightly so, he thought. Disorderly creatures. They pushed on past it. There was still quite a walk ahead of them.

  As they went, Lewgar arranged and rearranged his thoughts. Marlowe, he thought, had been too distracted, too blinded by his pursuit of his own path, to pay much attention to what he’d asked Raleigh. He didn’t want to announce it, to make himself sound foolish. After they had passed through Ludgate, he swallowed and took his chance. ‘Did you mark what the fellow said about Drake’s mariners?’

  Marlowe didn’t hear him at first; a group of drunken men – they might even have been mariners – were stumbling up Creed Lane. The creatures parted around them, singing and hanging on each other’s shoulders. Lewgar repeated his question.

  ‘What of them?’

  ‘Drake sailed to the New World – around the globe – with a whole fleet. The Sparrowhawk amongst them. Perhaps some of his men know more – or will tell more – than he did.’

  ‘The Sparrowhawk’s men are all dead.’ Marlowe tugged on his reins, as his horse slid a little on some churned muck.

  ‘Yes. But they had friends, surely. Men who were on that voyage. On the other ships – the Golden Hind the – what was it? The Elizabeth?’ Defensively, he added, ‘better than speaking to the dead. I imagine words are exchanged amongst mariners. They might know something of the lost ship, the gold, this El Sol Dorado.’ By way of an offering, he said, ‘whether it is a great golden treasure or a chart of some kind. Words would have been exchanged.’

  Marlowe smiled at nothing, staring ahead towards the turning into Thames Street, the great length of which would lead them back in the direction of the bridge. ‘It is worth pursuing.’ His smile deepened. ‘Better, perhaps, than speaking to dead men. Yes, I think that those still living might be more forthcoming.’

  Lewgar nodded, satisfied. More than ever, he was certain that the solution to everything – the lost treasure and crew and El Sol Dorado, whatever it was – lay in discovering exactly what had happened to the Sparrowhawk between its being sent by Drake back to England and its appearance, empty and oddly-conditioned, half-mounted on a rock in Wembury Bay.

  ***

  Night had fallen hard by the time they reached Southwark. Most windows were shuttered and locked against it. Others blazed with light, letting the discordant singing and raucous laughter of their denizens out into the streets. Over to their right, the bawdier houses of Paris Garden gave off their own, greater light, as men streamed across the river to indulge their vices in candlelit rooms.

  They did not enter The Tabard through its taproom. Instead, they went through its high archway, into the enclosed innyard, and passed the horses off to a yawning groom. Lewgar yawned himself, in unintended imitation. A foolish thing, he thought. Though they had ridden and strode about London much during the day, it was nothing compared to the hard riding of the previous couple of weeks. His muscles and joints no longer ached from movement, as they had those first few days on the ride out of Cambridge. Only the little needling pain in his side nipped, and that not too greatly.

  ‘Now to see how our friend has fared,’ said Marlowe, as they mounted the wooden steps which led to the first-floor gallery. ‘I own I had forgotten him. Perhaps we might feed him and then … then I think we must release him in the morning. Find some other place to lodge on the morrow.’

  Lewgar said nothing as they shuffled along the gallery. He had forgotten about their captive too. The creature’s gag would have dried out; he would have a tremendous thirst upon him. And rightly and deserv
edly so – wicked, low thing that he was.

  Ahead of him, Marlowe reached the door to their chamber, his hands already fiddling at his belt for the key.

  He froze.

  ‘What is it?’ Lewgar moved to join him as Marlowe’s head swivelled. The fellow put a little white finger to his lips and inclined his head.

  Lewgar, following his gaze, saw what he’d seen.

  The door to the room had been broken, forced. His throat dried. Had their prisoner made a noise? Been helped by some fellow lodger – the tapster, Hillyard, perhaps? No. Then, surely, the law would have been waiting.

  Slowly, Marlowe raised his hand and gently pushed the door open. It moved without a squeak. Giving Lewgar a nod, he stepped into the room.

  ‘Jesus!’ he said. Lewgar jumped at the sudden cry – jumped again as Marlowe’s hand shot out, gripping his sleeve and yanking him into the doorway.

  He took in the scene at once. Their prisoner had gone nowhere. He lay prone on the floor, much as they’d left him, in a sticky pool of blood. A candle had been lit, sending a warm glow over the gruesome scene, making the blood a dark, brownish smudge on the floorboards.

  ‘Murdered,’ said Marlowe. Already he had released Lewgar’s arm, skipped across the floor, and bent to the man. He looked up. ‘His throat’s been cut.’

  Lewgar, lifting his hands to his own throat, crushing his short ruff, began making inarticulate sounds. Murder. His thoughts were too many, too frightening. Chief amongst them rode one word: run. Run, run, run!

  He turned, as if to do just that, when something else hit him.

  A dull, steady, thunk-thunk, thunk-thunk, thunk-thunk.

  Two burly petty constables, their batons held purposefully over their shoulders, appeared in the doorway like an immoveable wall, blocking any escape.

  15

  ‘Say nothing,’ hissed Marlowe, rising smoothly. More loudly, he said, ‘good evening, my good fellows.’ He backed away from the body, skirting the bed to stand by the table. Lewgar remained rooted to the spot, marooned in the middle of the room, as the constables entered.