Norgate glanced at Seymour, who interlaced his long fingers with the shadow of a smile. Nothing in his manner betrayed special knowledge, but Norgate couldn’t help but suspect. Did Seymour know how unusual Marlowe’s circumstances were? After all, Seymour seemed to make a business of knowing things he had no business knowing. Norgate sighed. Behind him, the oil-painted faces of past college masters drilled history’s conservative gaze through the back of his head.
They would never listen to him otherwise. He had to tell them.
Norgate thought again of his first conference with the queen’s secretary. How the man had leaned forward when Norgate mentioned a poor graduate student with an expansive wit and a poorly developed moral center. Norgate’s business was with books, not with men of that nature. He’d sworn to carry the secret to the end. But he’d also sworn to obey the queen’s orders. And he could not now do both.
Damn it, he thought, reaching into the pocket of his scholar’s robe for the letter. He would force his colleagues to pass Marlowe and then never think of the reckless student or the imposing spymaster again. Marlowe could get himself stabbed in a back alley the next day for all Norgate cared. The portrait of Thomas Aldrich regarded him with some reproof at this, but he refused to take the bait.
“Gentlemen, I don’t think you understand,” he said. “This debate is useless. We will grant Marlowe his degree. Because of this.”
The sound of the letter slapping against the table silenced the room. The fellows peered at the delicate seal, the Tudor rose broken now but unmistakable. Crawley looked to Dryden, who gave a bewildered shrug. Norgate exhaled a single laugh. The rest of the head council wanted more involvement in the college’s higher functions. See how they liked this.
“Master Seymour, if you would read the letter aloud, please,” he said.
Seymour displayed no surprise or confusion. His expression was rather one of academic curiosity, a logical conundrum he would see resolved. He took up the page with a wry look at the master—reinforcing Norgate’s notion that Seymour knew more than he let on.
Half smile still firmly in place, Seymour read.
“Dear sir, let me first commend you for your devotion to the education of England, and assure you how little I desire to interfere with the success of your profession. I write regarding the scholar Christopher Marlowe and his pending graduation. In all Marlowe’s actions outside the university, he has behaved well and discreetly—”
Haywood gave a soft hum at the word discreetly.
“Well and discreetly,” Seymour repeated, louder. “He has done Her Majesty some good service, and deserves to be rewarded for his faithful dealings. Therefore, I request that he should be granted the degree he was to take this year. It is not Her Majesty’s will that anyone working for the benefit of his country, as Marlowe has been, should be defamed by those who are ignorant of his affairs. Yours respectfully—”
Seymour paused. He coughed, then read the letter’s signature with deceptive calm.
“Sir William Cecil, Lord Burghley, lord president of the Privy Council and royal treasurer to Her Sovereign Majesty Elizabeth, Queen of England and Ireland.”
The fellows stared, stunned out of speech. Yes, gentlemen, Norgate thought. The student you’ve loathed and tried to expel for years has been carrying out clandestine operations for the Privy Council. Tell me again what you would do in my position.
“Well, gentlemen,” Norgate said. “I take it we are decided?”
Haywood was reduced to stammering. “Sir, we. I. My God—”
“You’re suggesting that because Marlowe ran off in the night to play the hero in Rheims, we are obligated to—” Crawley began.
“Rheims?” Haywood repeated. “You think Marlowe’s passing as a priest?”
“As likely that as the idea Sir William Cecil is involved—”
“It doesn’t matter where he’s gone or what he’s done,” Dryden said. “Academic integrity—”
Seymour regained his composure in moments. The madness of poets, Norgate supposed, to accept the impossible as perfectly credible. “Do you prefer treason over bending a few rules?” he asked.
Haywood froze at the word treason. Crawley and Dryden were engaged in a rapid, silent conversation across the table, each daring the other to do something to stop this affront to all they held dear. Norgate groaned, though he doubted anyone but Seymour heard. If God himself blasted the words Let Christopher Marlowe Graduate into a stone tablet, the fellows would still debate the matter for hours. But Norgate was master of Corpus Christi. That came with a thousand annoyances, an eternal nightmare of bureaucracy. It also, on occasion, came with authority.
He stood, leaning his palms on the table. “Gentlemen,” he said, “Marlowe will receive his degree this year, as planned. If that concerns you, I suggest you take up the matter with Her Majesty.”
As Norgate swept out of the room, hearing Crawley splutter over his shoulder, he finally understood the attraction of empire. The Old Testament might warn against Pharaoh’s tyranny, but it was the only effective model for making decisions.
Nineteen
Kit lay on his back in the servants’ quarters and gazed up at the ceiling, somehow both exhausted and on edge. Silence hung around him complete as the darkness. It was early still—half past four, he guessed—and what remained of Mary’s reduced staff was still dead asleep. The previous day’s work had been no less exhausting than any of the others, but Kit had nevertheless lain awake from midnight on, thinking, counting the minutes. It had been that way for weeks. The idea of sleep taunted him, just out of reach.
He sat up and leaned sideways, reaching for his shoes. It was so early it was still late, but his body hummed with energy, urging him to get up, to move. He had nowhere to go—wouldn’t learn anything in a sleeping house—but at this point his choices were walking or screaming from frustration, and one seemed decidedly wiser than the other.
Chartley felt like a tomb, he thought, as he left the room and descended the darkened stair. The manor’s entrance hall yawned before him, low arched ceilings with long shadows that licked his heels, and the walls looked silver with moonlight. The urge to scream still itched the back of his throat. He almost wanted to give in. Make this house ring with his fear, if only for a moment.
Two months. Two months he’d been back. Two months dreaming of the Armada on England’s shores, waiting for the sound of cannon thundering in the distance. In all that time, Kit had heard nothing. Not a whisper. Nothing of Mary’s assassins. Not a word from Anne about her faith, which would at least have been leverage, would have been something. Only the voice in the back of his mind, hissing, You’re wasting time, you’ll fail, the Armada will come, and thousands of people will die.
Kit paused. Through the stillness, the smallest sounds carried. Someone was walking nearby, too fast for half past four. Without thinking, Kit set off toward the sound. It didn’t matter what it was. He needed something, anything.
Turning the corner, he found Matthew starting up the stairs. Between his disheveled hair, muddy boots, and the strong scent of horse, the groom must have arrived minutes before. And in his hand—Kit felt his blurred brain narrow down on it—in his hand he held a letter.
“Matthew,” he said.
Matthew flinched. “Kit? What in hell are you doing awake?”
Kit shrugged. “I couldn’t sleep,” he said, still watching the letter. “Let me take that to Mary. You go rest.”
“Are you sure?”
Kit had never been more sure of anything. That letter—if it was what he suspected—could change everything. But only if he read it and sent what he found to London before the manor woke. He felt Walsingham’s cold presence behind him, and the disdainful glare of Sir Robert Cecil through the dim light. You should have known better, Sir Francis, than to trust something like this to a country fool. What did I tell you w
ould happen?
No. He couldn’t fail.
“Here,” Kit said, holding out his hand. “Just because I can’t sleep doesn’t mean you shouldn’t.”
Matthew smiled and pressed the letter into Kit’s palm. He yawned, a little ostentatiously, made a quick sign of thanks, and climbed the stairs with carrying footsteps. Matthew, at least, had nothing to hide at this hour.
God bless sleepless nights. Kit itched to read the letter then and there, but eagerness couldn’t be allowed to spill over into stupidity. Anyone might discover him here, just as he’d discovered Matthew. He took off down the corridor and ducked through the first door he found, without thinking about what lay beyond it. Anything for privacy. It had never been so important to be alone.
He eased the door shut, turning the handle as he did to make no sound. Then, feeling his blood rush with each breath, he looked around.
He laughed. Just once, but he couldn’t hold it in.
The room was small and well lit despite the hour, with a handful of candles casting golden light across two wooden benches. In front of the benches stood a low table bearing a gold crucifix, an open psalter, and two framed paintings: one of the Virgin Mother, the other of Saint Catherine of Siena. Mary’s private chamber, and her space for prayer. Well, Kit did require a miracle of sorts.
The Virgin’s painted eyes watched Kit in reproach as he turned to the letter. Through the page’s single fold, he saw a familiar tangle of symbols, and an instinctive smile crossed his face. Babington’s cipher. The source of so much fear months before, now as easy to read as English, as welcome as a dear friend. Kit sank down onto the bench and lifted the wax seal from the letter the way Gregory had taught him at Cambridge, so no one would suspect it had been tampered with.
In the golden light of the candles, he read.
My lady,
I have done as you asked. Before the usurper fortifies her forces, my friends and I prepare to strike. You may rely on these men as you rely on me. Barnwell and Tilney you’ve met and, as I think, trust. Father John Ballard of the Jesuit order is a stranger to you, but be assured my confidence resides in him more than in any man living. My lady, now is the time. I wait only for your word.
AB
Kit pressed a hand over his mouth. He’d forgotten to breathe. Names. Only three of the six assassins Babington had spoken of in his previous letter, true, but he had names. Barnwell, Tilney, John Ballard the Jesuit. It was what Walsingham had sent him for. Would it be enough? It had to be. He would damn these men, he’d do it today, and their deaths would thrust a stumbling block in the way of England’s ruin. Three lives for a nation. Three lives to return to his own. The equation felt perfectly balanced.
He heard the door open behind him.
Kit thrust the paper into the inner pocket of his doublet. Thinking fast, he dropped to his knees in front of the bench and bowed his head, praying aloud. A scrap of doctrine, stored out of sight until needed, stepped forward for the occasion. The Latin came easily, from that rote space beyond thought. He hardly heard what he was saying. At least this was a lie he’d practiced. How many times had he broken into loud, inauthentic prayer while the Cambridge rector glared at him across the chapel?
As Mary knelt beside him, he wondered if his Latin sounded as much like amateur necromancy to her ears as it did to his.
Mary folded her hands in prayer, though she said nothing. Her gown, black with gold stitching, put Kit in mind of a funeral pall. Ignoring him, she looked at the Christ pinned to his golden cross on the table. Christ looked back with the heavy-eyed resentment of a whipped hound. She waited for Kit to finish the Latin cadence before she spoke.
“I confess, I did not expect piety from you,” she said, to all appearances addressing Christ. “You pray for your sister?”
Jane. Again Jane, whispering answers in his ear. God was a fiction, but if angels existed, Jane was one of them. “Yes, madam,” he said.
“And you use the prayers of the true faith,” she said, smiling. “Daring, in these times.”
Kit blinked. Had he? The words had jumped from the darkness of memory to save him, but sure enough, no orthodox Protestant would have spoken that prayer. Hail, holy Queen, Mother of mercy, our life, our sweetness, and our hope. A prayer Kit’s mother would murmur, late at night, when she thought no one could hear. A hard habit to unlearn. Back when Katherine Marlowe had learned to pray, Protestants had been heretics, and Catholics the righteous. Under other circumstances, Kit would have laughed to think he couldn’t tell the difference.
Mary crossed herself and sat on the bench, smoothing her dark skirts. When Kit stood, he kept several delicate feet between them. “How old are you, Marlowe?” Mary asked.
Mary’s interest meant one of two things. Either she trusted him enough to care, or she suspected him and wanted to keep him talking until he condemned himself. Either way, fear and shifty silence wouldn’t help.
“Twenty-two,” Kit said.
She nodded. “Close in age. I thought so.”
“Close to—”
“My son,” Mary said, smiling. “He may resemble you, for all I know. I have not seen him in twenty years.” She paused. “When my cousin kills me, Marlowe, do you think my son will pray for me as you pray for your sister?”
Any servant with experience in humility would have deflected the question like a swordsman turning a blow. He knew what he ought to say: something anodyne and reassuring, I’m sure you have many more years to live, my lady. But Kit knew Mary better than that. She was a formidable woman, but she valued faith over flattery, and a bold statement spoken honestly over cringing evasions. He’d been watching her so long that certain parts of her mind were as familiar as his own.
“It doesn’t matter whether he prays or not, madam,” he said. “I haven’t known you long, but I know you don’t need help to reach God’s grace.”
For a long moment, Mary said nothing. Kit shifted his weight, watching her. Maybe he should have said the usual thing. Perhaps he’d offended her, and his gamble would be read as a wish for her murder. But when she turned to him at last, she wore the same expression as the dog-eyed Christ: mournful, but gentle. “Do you know, Marlowe,” she said, “no one else has admitted to me that I may die. Even Thomas Morgan could not manage that.”
Hands clasped in front of him, he ran his thumb along his opposite knuckles, watching it instead of her. “Madam, you’re kind, and wise, and pious. But you aren’t God, so yes, I expect someday you’ll die, the same as the rest of us.”
Another gambit that paid off, as Mary laughed. “Honesty suits you, Marlowe,” she said. “I commend it.” She looked back to the crucifix, considering. “I should have died earlier, I think. It would have been neater that way.”
Kit didn’t know what to say to that, but it didn’t matter. To Mary, Kit was nothing but an abstraction to test her thoughts against, someone who had no choice but to listen.
“Women martyrs are always young, beautiful virgins,” she went on, looking at the painting of Saint Catherine with something approaching scorn. “When tragedy is not beautiful, we do not care enough to call it tragedy. I am too old for martyrdom now. A wasted chance. It would have meant more earlier.”
Kit flexed his fingers, then relaxed them, scanning his mind for something to say. It was one thing to want a woman’s death in the abstract. Quite another to hear her speak of it herself, with the fearless calm of a resigned tactician. Saints and martyrs and the terrible ways they can die. England’s fate rested on destroying this woman, but even looking at the cracks in her composure made him want to be sick.
“Was your sister beautiful?” Mary asked.
The shift in tone left Kit disoriented. A glimpse into Mary’s mind, maybe. When your own death hovered so close, it held no more weight than any other subject of conversation. Your servants’ siblings. Your head on a spike. The
weather. “I don’t think so, madam. People said she looked like me.”
Mary looked at him straight on. Intent. Considering him. Kit remembered the sketch Gregory had shown him months ago, that same gaze interrogating him from the page. He wanted to crumble under it. “I see tragedy in you,” she said. “I am sure I would have seen it in her as well.”
It might have been a threat. It might have been a compliment. It felt like neither.
“I do not think the world has been kind to you, Marlowe,” Mary said. “And I do not expect it will be kind to me.” She sighed again, turned away. “I must be patient, as Christ was patient. I must endure.”
Endure until Kit and Walsingham decided she couldn’t any longer. Until Kit wrote to Whitehall and the dogs slipped their leashes, aimed their teeth at her throat. Mary trusted him. Her greatest mistake, and, if he succeeded, her last. The letter weighted down his pocket. He wanted to run. He wanted to tell her everything. He wanted to drive a knife through her heart, or his, and either way put an end to it.
Both Kit and Mary looked toward the Christ on the table, static and glittering like a pinned beetle. His arms stretched in both directions at once, pointing out no path.
“I will add your sister to my prayers, Marlowe,” Mary said without looking at him.
It was the most backward dismissal he’d ever heard. Mary devoted her attention to the makeshift altar, Christ and the Virgin Mother, Saint Catherine beautiful and ignored to the side. She might not have seen Kit leave.
* * *
—————
The letter’s seal was cheaply made, easy to manipulate. In Chartley’s small dining room, Kit softened the wax over a candle flame before pressing it back with the flat of a knife. He laid the letter near Mary’s place at the breakfast table, then paused.
Three men would die because of that letter. Likely more. And Mary, contemplating martyrdom, praying for Kit, for Jane, while he prayed for her death. So four, at least, would die.
A Tip for the Hangman Page 15