‘Here,’ said Mistress Byrd, returning with two wooden cups and passing them over. The visitors took them. A pleasing, spicy smell rose to Lewgar’s nostrils as he sipped. The hippocras was warming. It reached right down into his gut. Their hostess, slipping onto her stool and spreading her maroon skirts before her – good skirts, he thought, expensive – watched, her expression placid.
‘This is very good, mistress,’ said Cecily. Lewgar spluttered his agreement. The woman inclined her head.
‘We come to speak of your late husband, if the matter doesn’t trouble you,’ he said. ‘A mariner, as we understand. Late of the Sparrowhawk. You have heard that the ship has been found?’
She met his eyes evenly. ‘Yes. I heard. Many wild tales. Of lost gold and such. Nonsense. My husband died on the Sparrowhawk as it returned to England. He was lost. The ship was lost. I know nothing of the sea casting it back up.’ She spoke as though reciting a story. Lewgar guessed she had had to repeat it much in recent weeks.
‘Yet we have lately heard that your husband was seen. After the ship was lost. Near your old home in Water Lane.’
Her eyelids flickered, but she retained her colour. ‘That is a wicked and cruel thing, sir. To speak of ghosts. I loved Roger. I mourned his loss.’ Lewgar sipped at his hippocras. It was a foolish woman, he thought, who gave her heart and her life to a mariner. Yet this woman did not seem foolish. She seemed careful. Cautious.
‘Do you believe in ghosts?’ asked Cecily. Her voice betrayed nothing – it was cold – so cold that Lewgar chanced her a look.
‘I do not,’ said Mistress Byrd. She opened her mouth to speak and then closed it. Her skin had been thinned by age; Lewgar could see her temple pulse as her thoughts tumbled. ‘No. I do not. And I must be about fixing my brother his supper. If it pleases you.’ She began to rise. ‘You said you come from Sir Francis Drake? What was your–’
A crash sent Lewgar and Cecily sprawling forwards. Their cups fell to the floor, the hippocras splashing onto the carpet. Something was raining down, something –
Glass!
Above them, behind them, the horn window had smashed inwards. ‘What!’ he cried. As he rose, his eyes popped. Something else had flown into the room, was still flying, sailing, landing on the carpet between them and their hostess, orange, spreading, pooling.
Cecily shrieked.
Mistress Byrd became a whirling blur of maroon. She too was crying out, her arms flailing. ‘Arthur! Arthur! Fire! Arthur!’
Lewgar rose to a crouch, reaching out for Cecily, cradling her back to keep her bent under whatever might come through the window next. Looking up, his head still bent, he saw a stout man barrel through the passage behind Mistress Byrd. He was wielding a bucket and set to dousing the flames.
Irresolute, Lewgar watched, trying to understand what had happened. Someone outside had attacked them, had smashed the window with a stone – it lay humped on floor, like a petrified bird – and followed up with a flaming torch. The old man – Arthur? – was grunting, stomping on the carpet, killing the last of the flames. The lady of the house was at his back, her hands still fluttering.
Silence fell, broken only by ragged breathing from four throats. And then all heads turned from the destruction on the floor to the window.
‘We are attacked,’ said Cecily. Lewgar looked at her. Her face was deathly pale, her hand clutched about her throat. Her forehead was slick with sweat. He felt it on his own too.
‘Attacked,’ he echoed.
‘We must fetch a constable,’ said Cecily, between minute shakes of her head. ‘We must – we must –’
‘No!’ This was Mistress Byrd. She was clinging to the arm of her brother, who was staring at them. He was a hard-faced old fellow, grey-eyed and flinty. ‘Get out! Both of you. Strangers! Speaking of ghosts – ill fortune, inviting ill fortune! Get out! Arthur – make them go!’
‘We will, madam – we will go,’ Lewgar’s voice had risen to a screech. He tamed it. ‘We will go.’ In truth, he wanted to be free of the pair, free of the house. ‘I will see who did this,’ he announced, offering them a bow. ‘Follow behind me, Cecily.’
He skirted the soiled carpet, making for the door. Pulling it open, he stuck his head out. The little lane was deserted; whoever had thrown the stone and the torch had fled, either onto Houndsditch Street or into the vast sprawling fields which lay at the rear of the house. ‘They meant to scare us,’ he said.
‘They succeeded,’ said Cecily. Her voice was strained. She, he realised, had not been attacked before. He was becoming used to it. Yet, before, he had had Marlowe there – a drunken Marlowe, with fire and fury animating him. He swallowed, before stepping out into the street. Cecily followed, and the door slammed behind them. A heavy thud announced a bar falling across it.
He led the way down the lane, back onto Houndsditch Street. There, people were milling in groups. The pair approached them, only to told that they’d heard a crash and witnessed a man moving away from the place. A thin, dark-haired, pale fellow all in brown, who had scurried off. Lewgar accepted this. He knew the man well enough – the creature who had attacked him and Marlowe in Wembury and dogged them since, setting a cutthroat on them and then slaying him, having them arrested for murder. ‘There,’ he said, leading Cecily away from the watchers, ‘is our man. The one you saw at The Tabard. He haunts us still.’
‘He has been following us,’ she said. ‘Today! He – he might have killed us both.’
Lewgar’s heart had begun to slow. It continued doing so as they walked up the street towards Bishopsgate, trying to look everywhere at once. Houses and shops and yawning, ominous entrances to lanes passed in a blur. ‘I rather think that was the point. Or to scare us. Would you know him if you saw him again?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe. I don’t know.’
His thoughts were scattered. The Byrd woman had flown from his mind. So had the Sparrowhawk. ‘I would get you to safety,’ he said.
‘On a cart home?’
He looked at her, and they paused in the street, just before the portcullised arch of Bishopsgate, which seemed to promise security. Putting his hand over hers, he said, ‘no. Not if this man has followed us through the morning. He knows you well enough now. Knows you are with us.’
She swallowed. There were tears in her eyes. Probably, he thought, she wished she’d never met him, never seen him, never known of his innocence and been drawn to saving him from unjust imprisonment. To his amazement, she stood on her tiptoes and kissed the tip of his nose.
Lewgar stood, his mouth open, until he realised he must resemble one of the fish down at Billingsgate. ‘We’ll go to The Abbot’s Inn. Meet Marlowe. I’ll tell him. Tell him you’re with us.’
19
Howton had no fear of constables. For one, they could be paid off. For another, no man or woman in Houndsditch – safely outside the city walls – would care to bring trouble to themselves and their day’s trade, if they had one, by inviting in the nose of the law.
‘The two are fled,’ said Fray Nicolas. ‘A little fire burned them out. They ran. Back to the city. Perhaps to meet with the other, this man Marlowe. If that’s his true name.’
‘Good. Know you anything of the house?’
‘No. I thought it better not to speak with anyone. Not to ask before. And after – I came to you.’ He bowed. They were in an alehouse in Shoreditch, not far from the playhouses and only a short distance from Houndsditch. Throughout the morning and into the afternoon, they had followed the couple’s meandering path through dockyards and up towards the long suburban street beyond the city wall. Evidently, Lewgar had discovered something from the creatures he had questioned – the house on Houndsditch Street was the first that had drawn them inside.
What it was they’d found out, Henry Howton would know too, soon enough.
‘Come, then, my good clerk,’ he said, raising his voice, just in case any of the drunken fools in the alehouse had sharp ears. ‘Let us return to the place.’ He st
ood, scraping the legs of his stool against the rush-strewn stone floor, and abandoned the barely touched tankard of beer.
He and Nicolas stepped out into the late-afternoon chill. It was a drizzling, miserable kind of day. It might be brightened up by securing knowledge that would lead them to El Sol Dorado and the other wonders of the Sparrowhawk.
The streets were busy. The theatres up the road had just disgorged their patrons. Drunken singing filled the air, as well as talk of some butchery or other – very lifelike – that had taken place upon the stage. Howton and Fray Nicolas went with the general drift towards the city. The majority of the men and women flowed onwards, pooling at the plaster-and-timber arch over the raised iron of Bishopsgate. Breaking off to the left, the two followed the long, wide, suburban stretch of Houndsditch Street. Nicolas led the way, heading straight down the road in the direction of the great Gunfoundry. Before they reached it, he stopped, jabbing a finger to a little lane running between a pair of fine, middling class houses on the left. ‘There.’
Howton straightened his hat. He’d chosen a good one – a tall, thimble-shaped affair of green satin slashed with pink silk – and paired it with a goffered ruff, peascod doublet, and melon hose. His sword swung easily. Anyone might have taken him for a successful courtier, exactly as he wished to be seen.
As he passed down the lane, he saw movement through the broken window – a flash of a face, perhaps. Thumps and bangs came from inside, all hurried, furtive. He did not knock at the door. Instead, he stepped a little farther, turned and looked past Fray Nicolas – the coast was clear – and then gave the confessor a nod.
Nicolas stood back, half-turned, and kicked out at the door.
Bang.
The oak door shook but didn’t give.
Bang!
It fell inward on its hinges, a cheap wooden bar clattering. Nicolas hung back as Howton chanced another look up the lane towards the street – nothing, and there was nothing at the rear of the house except rolling, dark green fields. He hopped inside.
‘Queen’s business!’ he cried, enjoying the lie. ‘Come out!’
The house opened into a dull little parlour, which had its carpet rolled back. In a doorway at the rear stood a stout man of middling age. ‘Who goes there?’ In one hand, the fellow held a club. His other rested against the plaster lintel.
‘We understand this house has been attacked.’ He paused, until he was sure the dark shadow of Nicolas loomed behind him. ‘Queen’s business,’ he said again. It pleased him less the second time.
‘Some breakage,’ said the man. His voice cracked, and he couldn’t meet Howton’s eye. But he lowered the club. ‘Boys, prentices. Taking their sport of an old man.’
‘What is your name?’ Howton stepped into the room, making a loose gesture behind him. A soft bang – the door closing behind Nicolas – satisfied him.
The old fellow swallowed. ‘Arthur. Arthur Nash, if it please you, sir.’
‘Tell me, Goodman Nash, why did a man and a woman visit this house today? What did they seek?’
The question seemed to throw him. The club lifted again and then fell. ‘Man and woman? I don’t … I don’t know…’
‘We are not to be played with, Nash.’ He clicked his fingers and Nicolas stepped beside him. ‘We know what the creatures seek. The truth of a ship called the Sparrowhawk. And the great treasures it carried. The ship has reappeared and yet not the treasures. How can this be?’
Arthur Nash stepped into the parlour, towards them. Howton’s hand closed on the hilt of his sword. ‘I don’t know anything about a ship.’ The old man had begun to tremble. Howton had expected this – had expected fear. He had wanted it. But he had not thought to see it so quickly. Excitement thrilled through him. Here was something, indeed – here was something he hoped that the pair who had visited earlier in the day hadn’t quite managed to extract.
‘Are you alone here, Goodman Nash?’
‘Yes,’ said the old man, raising his chin. ‘But I have neighbours. Who’ll come if they hear anything – anything amiss.’
Howton’s hand fell. ‘Look at me, Goodman Nash. I’m a gentleman. Do you think I would do anything … amiss … to an old man? I want merely to know what you told these people. What they learnt of you.’
‘I told them nothing.’ He raised his free hand and mopped his brow. The grey fringe was damp. He swayed a little on his feet. ‘What is all this, of a sudden? First creatures from Drake and then from the Queen?’
‘Drake!’ hissed Howton. So that’s whose house it was the two men had visited when Nicolas had sent his dim-witted cutthroat to spy on them. But did that mean they worked for the great pirate or that they were seeking knowledge from him?
‘El Draque!’ hissed Nicolas, his Spanish accent leaking out.
Nash seemed to notice it too. His expression changed. ‘You’re a Spaniard?’ It was part question, part statement. His club rose again.
‘Hold him!’ cried Howton. Nicolas flew forward, disarming the old man just as he was raising his club. It fell to the floorboards with a flat boom. Before Nash could scream or cry out, an arm was circled round his throat, cutting off his breath. ‘Do not kill him – hold, hold!’
Fray Nicolas held.
He held the old man, in fact, as a child might hold a doll; for all Nash was thicker, he was shorter, weaker, spent. His eyes rolled wildly in his head. He almost seemed to be trying to turn, to twist in the grip of the man who had circled behind him.
Howton drew out his sword. It came easily, in a smooth whisper. He held it before him, its point aimed at Nash’s heart. ‘And now, Goodman Nash, you will tell us all you know. For I think you do know something. I think you told it to those creatures who visited earlier. It is mean and niggardly of you not to share it with us. You will, I think. If you do not, I shall take your ear. If you still do not, a finger.’ He let the sword point drop, until it hovered before the man’s leather codpiece. ‘Let us hope you have found your tongue – and to speak softly, like a gentleman – before we are forced to go lower.’
A weary kind of resignation fell over Nash’s face. Howton gave Nicolas a minute nod. The friar let his arm fall a few inches. After sucking at the air for a moment, his broad chest heaving, the old man croaked, ‘if … if … I … tell you. Tell you all I know. You’ll … leave this place. Leave it be.’
Howton lowered his sword. He didn’t sheathe it. ‘You have my word, Goodman Nash. As a gentleman. I will most certainly leave the place untouched.’
After another few minutes in which ragged breathing dominated, and still pinioned in the iron grip of the Spanish confessor, the man calling himself Arthur Nash began to tell his tale.
20
The light was failing as Lewgar and Cecily gained Fleet Street and found the sign bearing an Abbot’s Mitre. Light spilled out of open shutters, and already tired-looking men were huddled outside, being passed through drinks. Passing them, the pair went up the little street beside the inn and through its broad double doors.
The place was large, old, and well kept. Its square tables were each covered in cloths, and every one had a number of drinkers seated on stools. The rafters might almost have risen and fallen with their laughter and song, all of it aided by competing music-men who wandered around gathering tips. Lewgar’s gaze, too, wandered – over the heads and hats; he stood for a moment, hoping that, if Marlowe were there, the fellow would see him and Cecily without their having to pass around the room and ask the tapster at the bar on the far side.
No such luck.
‘I cannot see him,’ said Cecily. ‘I hope he wasn’t followed too.’
Lewgar gave her hand a little squeeze. It had become a quite natural thing to do. With a thrill, he’d thought – but certainly hadn’t said – that if they’d happened to speak a few select words in a certain order, all their hand holding would be enough to make them married truly enough. Even in jest, he thought she might look at him with revulsion. And there would be an end of their fear-
and excitement-bred hand holding.
‘No,’ he said. ‘Nor I.’ He had swept the room without moving twice, and back both times. Marlowe wasn’t there. He jumped as a fellow bumped into them from behind.
‘Watch it! Standing in doorways.’
‘You watch it,’ snapped Cecily, her voice coarsening. ‘We was – were here first!’
The man, pushing past them, turned and grinned. He was young – an apprentice, probably – and he grabbed at his codpiece. ‘A saucy one, you are, wench.’
Lewgar stepped forward – he was a good head taller than the young pup. ‘You watch your mouth.’
‘You make me!’ said the young fellow.
Cecily stepped forward, jabbing nervously at her coif. The strings which fastened it under her chin had loosened and she fiddled at them. ‘Leave him,’ she said to Lewgar. ‘A young fool.’
The apprentice stood his ground for only a moment, as though weighing up whether to start a fight or not. Eventually, he spat on the floorboards, turned, and raised his hand to a group of other young men seated at a table. He marched off to them, throwing only one dark look over his shoulder.
‘Perhaps we might have something to drink?’ asked Cecily. ‘And not be lurking in doorways.’
Lewgar smiled. Together, they went to the bar and ordered two mugs of beer. Cecily sipped hers daintily. They remained at the bar, their eyes fixed on the door.
‘A strange –’
‘An odd –’
‘You first,’ she said.
Lewgar, feeling himself redden, said, ‘I was going to say, it’s been a strange day. And – and – I’m sorry for having brought a lawyer’s daughter into this madness. It – my life – usually – I’m a student. At Corpus Christi. My life has – never before has it been so topsy-turvy.’
‘You’ve not involved been engaged in this strange intelligence work?’
The Queen's Gold: A Christopher Marlowe Spy Thriller Page 21