“My apologies, Marlowe,” Strange said. His posture was casual, leaning against the opposite wall with his arms crossed, but he did genuinely look sorry. “But we can’t afford to take risks.”
“Be careful with him, Evan,” said the woman to the man with the knife. “I have a few questions I want to ask this one.”
Kit’s breath hitched, this time for a reason that had nothing to do with the steel against his throat. He knew that voice. And as his vision adjusted, he knew that face as well. Those sharp eyes, that long copper hair.
“Anne,” he whispered.
Anne Cooper said nothing, but the man behind Kit—Evan, she’d called him—dug his fingers into his hair until the back of Kit’s head nearly touched his shoulders. The knife would draw blood soon.
“When Lord Strange told me you were writing plays in London, I hardly believed it,” Anne said. “But where else would you go, after you betrayed Mary to Cecil? Stay close to the crown, so you can see us all hanged, one by one.”
Cecil. Had she seen him all those years ago at Chartley, standing beside Walsingham while Cecil made his arrest? Or had she bolted by then, heard his name mentioned secondhand? It was impossible to know how much she knew or how she knew it, but her knowing anything was too much. How had she even come here? He’d thought Anne’s loyalty was to Mary alone, but he’d been wrong—it had been to the faith more than to the person. An opportunist as well as a militant Catholic, then. Following the winds and offering her service to the current favorite, swapping Mary for Strange after the axe fell. Kit needed to think, but his mind was jolted loose and useless. He felt vacant, as if the knife had pierced the back of his skull and let the stagnant air empty him from within.
“You’ve made your point, Master Lloyd,” Strange said, gesturing in Kit’s direction. “Don’t get carried away.”
The blade twitched against Kit’s throat. He swallowed and felt a drop of blood glide along the cutting edge. The moment seemed to stretch a hundred years. Then, at last, Evan Lloyd removed the knife from Kit’s throat, shoving him forward into freedom.
Kit stumbled, dropping to one knee, and took a rattling inhale. Alive, his heartbeat said in his ears. Alive. Without thinking, he brought a hand to his throat. His fingertips came away wet with blood.
“Get up,” Anne said coldly.
Kit didn’t move. He no longer felt part of his body, only a thick cloud of fear above a man that had once been him. He knelt where he was, trying to think of nothing but his own breathing. To his surprise, a hand reached into view, palm up. A hand that, ten seconds ago, had held a knife at Kit’s neck.
Evan Lloyd was tall and blond, with a wispy mustache and eyes that, despite the knife in his left hand, looked kind. His grip was firm, and when Kit had staggered to his feet again, Evan gave him a sharp clap on the shoulder. It wasn’t much to go on, when his remaining life seemed to be measured in seconds rather than years, but Kit would take what he could get. He gave Evan a grim nod, then turned back to Anne. The thrill of the blade had silenced him at first, but now his fear had pushed over into focus. His head hummed with the clarity that came after cannon fire.
All right, he thought. You’re a liar and a talker. So talk. And lie. Act, because your life depends on it.
“So you were part of this,” he said to Anne. “All that time. And you never told me.” He pressed one hand to his mouth, as though trying to hold himself together. “My God, Anne. I could have helped you, if I’d known.”
Clearly Anne had expected panic, fumbling attempts to defend himself. She hadn’t expected him to turn the accusation back on her. It was one of the oldest tricks in Kit’s arsenal: flipping the argument upside down, catching his opponent on the defensive. Let her prove her dedication to him, and she’d have no thought left for his own.
“Don’t act surprised,” Kit said. He pitched his words higher, looser, aiming his tone like a bowshot toward indignation. He’d always been a capable liar, but this, this was virtuosity. No place like knifepoint to hit your stride. “You knew what I believe, and you still think I want that heretic bitch on the throne? After everything I gave for Mary, you think I’d turn my back on that now? I won’t be lectured for my faith, Cooper, not by you. Not until you’ve risked everything I have.”
“And what is that, precisely?” Strange said softly.
Given three minutes to concoct a more prudent answer, Kit wouldn’t have said what he did. But he didn’t have three minutes. He had this moment, right now. The key to a convincing lie was confidence, and the last thing he could afford was a stuttered excuse. He had to explain why he—a Catholic—had been seen with Sir Robert Cecil, why he’d come to live in London. And the answer came to him, not through divine inspiration but in Arthur Gregory’s voice, drifting across the years from the back room of the White Stag: Walsingham and I both knew you wouldn’t have lasted a day with the priests.
This was the biggest gamble he’d ever taken, but there was no reward without risk. And if anyone could do it successfully, Kit could.
He paused, as though weighing the risk of revealing a long-held secret. Then he sighed, closed his eyes briefly, and spoke. “Anne knows I’m a true Catholic, sir. What she doesn’t know is that I studied at the English College in Rheims.”
Strange raised his eyebrows. “You were a seminarian,” he said. “You.”
“Testor Deum,” Kit said. His proficiency in Latin was thanks to the bawdier passages of Ovid rather than Catholic scripture, but there was no reason for Strange to know that. “I didn’t study long enough to reach the priesthood—”
“Really,” Anne interrupted.
“Because I found another way to serve the cause,” Kit continued, as though she hadn’t spoken. “The English College is crawling with the queen’s spies; everyone knows it. One of them, he went by the name of Father Gregory, he took a liking to me. I nurtured that friendship, made him believe we wanted the same things. And then, after a time, he introduced me to his master, Sir Francis Walsingham.”
“The queen’s spymaster,” Strange said. It was impossible to read his voice. “You’re working for Walsingham.”
“He thinks so,” Kit said. “And if he finds out I’m undermining his plans from the inside, it’ll be my head on London Bridge. That’s why I couldn’t tell you, Anne,” he said, turning to her. “I wanted to. But with Poley there, and then Lord Rich, I couldn’t risk it, do you understand? I did everything I could. It wasn’t enough, but I tried.”
He let out a long breath and waited. The room seemed to grow smaller by the minute, the ceiling unbearably low overhead. He’d laid the lie down, for them to do with what they would. One more life to live alongside the others: a Catholic double agent, a seminarian turned rogue. He’d play the part as he’d played all the others, doubling roles and swapping masks to get what he needed. If it worked, if the rebels trusted Kit enough to confide in him, he’d be the greatest spy England ever had.
And if it failed, he would be dead, and none of it would matter anyway.
“When exactly were you in Rheims?” Evan said. His pale blue eyes were weak compared to Strange’s charismatic gaze, but they still kept Kit frozen where he was.
“I went when I was sixteen,” Kit said. “I met a Huguenot pilgrim in Canterbury who helped pay for passage. When I left, I went straight to Sheffield, where I met Anne.” It was true enough that Canterbury had crawled with Huguenots during Kit’s childhood—it was why he’d begun to write The Massacre at Paris in the first place, and, God willing, the research he’d done for that play would carry him through any questions of doctrine.
“And before that?” Strange said. “Were you raised Catholic?”
The absurdity of the question made Kit want to laugh. Bless their papist hearts, they were making this easy. “I believed many stupid things as a child because I’d been taught to. But I know better now. The queen’s church
is a joke, created so her impotent old father could fuck whoever he liked. And their Bible is a travesty. England’s poets should have hanged Tyndale for crimes against metaphor.”
Strange laughed, and for the first time in minutes Kit allowed himself to breathe easy. That was the same laugh Kit had heard at the George Inn, the laugh of a man amused by someone he considered an equal. There was a world of hope in that laugh. Never let it be said a little well-timed blasphemy couldn’t serve the purpose.
“And what will you give for the true faith, Marlowe?” Evan said.
It was an olive branch, of sorts, and Kit knew how to take it. “My life,” he said. “I thought I’d made that clear.”
Strange pushed himself up off the wall at last. At his full height, his head brushed the low ceiling. Kit felt profoundly small, like an insect waiting to be crushed. Then, Strange extended a hand. Kit shook it, and he took his deepest breath yet. The ache in his breastbone sharpened, as if his lungs had forgotten how to expand. If Evan had slit Kit’s throat, would Strange have looked on with that same smile? It was impossible to say.
“I meant what I said to you in Southwark, Marlowe,” Strange said. “The people are angry. With the crown, with the church, with all of it. They want that anger to matter. They want to be led by someone who listens to them.”
There it was. The plot coalescing, just out of reach. If Strange wanted to frame his quest for power as a populist uprising, let him. Walsingham could use that. Silencing a threat of this nature was as much a question of mastering public opinion as it was of direct action. They’d have to work fast, if the queen didn’t want a second iteration of the Pilgrimage of Grace from her father’s reign.
“I know that,” Kit said. “That’s why I’ve been doing this for so long. I want to help you, if I can.”
Strange nodded. “Anne?”
Anne scoffed, but Kit could bear any skepticism so long as it wasn’t accompanied by a blade. “I still don’t trust him.”
“I wouldn’t respect you if you did,” he said.
“Did you stay?” she said. “Until the end?”
It didn’t matter whether or not he had. Mary was dead and buried. Even if her ghost haunted Kit’s dreams, the next move on the chessboard was Strange, and Strange alone. But if it took a show of solidarity for Anne to trust him, he could spin a tale of remorse to convince any audience. Like all of his lies to these people, they rested on a foundation unsettlingly close to truth.
“I did,” he said. “For the trial, and after.”
Anne’s face had lost its soldier’s hardness. He wondered, absently, if she would cry. “How was she? At the end.”
Dead, Kit thought. “Like a queen,” he said.
Evan crossed himself, but Strange didn’t react. Mary was nothing to him. Putting a Scottish-born, French-raised queen on the throne of England would have done nothing to advance his dream, this vision of an England brought forward by the voice of the people. If Mary was gone, so be it.
“Walsingham suspects you,” Kit said to Strange. “That’s why he wanted me to earn your patronage. But I can keep him misinformed for as long as necessary. And anything you need to know from inside Whitehall, I’m your man.”
Strange hummed softly. “Feeding lies to the wolf. There’s an irony to it. I have to admit, Marlowe, if I needed an unscrupulous liar, you’d be my first choice.”
“My mother would be proud to hear it, sir,” Kit said, earning himself a short laugh from Evan and no reaction at all from Anne.
“If you can really do this, Marlowe,” Strange said, and Kit could see him thrill with the thought of it, “find out when Walsingham’s men are planning their next raid on the estate, and report that back to me. If your information is reliable, we can move from there.”
Kit nodded. “I can do that.”
“Where do you live now?” Evan said.
Christ. This kind of lying was dangerous enough without the risk of suspicious Catholics visiting in the middle of the night and stabbing him in his sleep. But they’d need to find him, to trust him. Keeping idle information secret would win him no friends. “Shoreditch,” he said. “Across from the church. Ask for Sarah Talbot’s house.”
“I’ll come to you next week,” Evan said, “and pass your news to the rest.”
Kit swallowed a curse. That wasn’t enough, for everything he’d just risked. If Strange met with Kit directly, Kit could learn the whole of their plans, not just what Evan Lloyd thought he could be trusted to know. Walsingham could arrest him, then. Strange would be trapped, like Kit was now, a rabbit in this stone warren.
“You can trust me to—” he began.
“We know Whitehall’s methods of questioning,” Evan said with a grim smile. “The less you know, the better.”
It would never happen, Evan had the wrong end of it entirely, but Kit couldn’t help following the insinuation to the end, to himself broken on the rack, each finger crushed, his breath the hitching whimper of a dying dog, and through the darkness of Whitehall’s subterranean passages, Strange’s handsome face, and that grim smile.
“We’ll send for you soon,” Strange said, nodding toward the ladder. “Don’t let us down, Marlowe.”
Kit hesitated, then nodded curtly. “You know where to find me,” he said.
As he turned his back on them, he could feel them watching. Evan, bright-eyed with hope that they’d found a supporter. Anne, alive to any suggestion of betrayal. And Lord Strange, turning this small room into the center of a people’s revolution.
Kit pushed the trapdoor and emerged into the library, into the light.
Thirty
Two days later, Kit knocked on the door to Walsingham’s office. The swaggering confidence of his earlier visit had vanished; now, he waited on edge for an invitation. His dreams, these last two nights, had worsened. Now, along with Mary’s endless shrieks and the depth of a grave, Kit dreamed of his own body thrown into a stone pit, throat slit and bloody, Strange’s laugh in his ears.
The door opened a moment after his knock, revealing a face Kit hadn’t expected. A tall man dressed plainly, hard face weathered from rough living and light sleep. When he saw Kit on the threshold, he let out a small laugh.
“If it isn’t the king of Bankside,” Arthur Gregory said, not unkindly.
Kit hadn’t realized how desperately he wanted a familiar face until the cool wave of relief that came from seeing Gregory. They’d never been friends—grudging acquaintances if anything—but they understood each other, and there was a comfort to that. “Good to hear you’ve missed me,” Kit said.
“Do you know the maddest thing about it, I have,” Gregory said, leaning against the doorway. “Cecil’s bringing in his own men now, but Christ knows none of them have your flair for wild heroics.”
“God broke the mold after making me,” Kit said, with a facetious half bow.
Gregory scoffed. “Or while he was doing it. Come in, then.”
He stepped aside, gesturing toward one of the chairs in front of Walsingham’s desk. Walsingham himself sat behind it, stiff-backed and edgy. It hadn’t been long since their last meeting, but the spymaster’s health had deteriorated faster than Kit had expected. He had lost weight, and his face shone paler than ever against his black doublet. Walsingham noted Kit’s alarm at once—and the hairline cut, still healing, along his throat—but said nothing about either. Ignoring the chair Gregory indicated, Kit sat on the edge of the desk, angled sideways to face Walsingham. After the ambush of two days before, turning his back to doors sent his pulse racing.
“Were you followed?” Walsingham asked.
Practicalities first. Always. “No,” Kit said. “I made sure of it.”
“Good.” Walsingham held up a hand, bidding Kit wait. He opened a drawer, then procured a small bottle, which he passed to Kit with a knowing look. “Pull yourself together
, then tell me everything.”
Kit laughed and took it. The whiskey was excellent and burned his throat like holy fire. “You have this just in case?”
“I work with Sir Robert Cecil now,” Walsingham said. “There is no ‘in case.’ ”
Kit drank again, longer this time, then passed the bottle to Gregory. “I have to admit,” he said, “I’m glad it’s the two of you here, not him.”
“Told you you’d warm to me,” Gregory said.
“You never.”
“You came here with news, I assume,” Walsingham said sharply. “Regarding the cipher?”
Kit flushed. Comforting as their presence felt, Gregory and Walsingham were not his friends, and he had a job to do. “Yes, sir,” he said. “I’ve solved it, and more than that.”
The words poured out of him, detached and foreign as if channeled from a far-off spirit. Thank God his voice didn’t waver. He drifted above his body, describing a nightmare that had happened to somebody else. He’d never admit how deeply it rattled him, the chill of the knife against his throat, not in front of the queen’s spies. But of course, Walsingham and Gregory both knew what a brush with death did to a man.
Walsingham listened in silence. The only way for Kit to gauge his reaction was the tightness of his mouth, which thinned until he seemed to have swallowed his lips. But when he learned about the gamble Kit had made, what he’d claimed about the English College, the spymaster’s iron restraint gave way. Gregory’s shocked oath was nothing compared to Walsingham’s anger, so fierce Kit’s voice died in the face of it.
“How dare you,” Walsingham said. Kit drew back, standing now with the desk between them. Five years ago, Walsingham would have taken Kit by the collar and thrown him to the ground, would have backed him against the wall until he stammered a desperate apology. Even ill as Walsingham was, that cloud of power had not left him. “I brought you in as a code breaker, Marlowe, not as an ungovernable madman who follows whatever foolish scheme comes to mind. You’ve tipped our hand to a band of Catholic murderers, so you can—”
A Tip for the Hangman Page 23