A Tip for the Hangman

by Allison Epstein

  “So they’ll trust me,” Kit said. His nerve had quailed, but he screwed it into place again and stood his ground. Walsingham had changed since Kit had been out of service, but so had he. No matter what Walsingham thought of Kit’s methods, they’d worked, and whatever worked was right. “They think I’m a double agent, sir. One of their soldiers.”

  “And the moment they doubt you, they’ll undo everything we’ve—”

  “Sir,” Gregory said carefully. Both Kit and Walsingham looked at him in surprise—interrupting Walsingham was a risk for only the direst of circumstances. “It’s madness, I’ll be the first to admit it. But it isn’t a bad plan. If they trust him, if it works, they’ll tell him everything.”

  Walsingham’s stormy brow remained unmoved. For a moment, Kit thought Walsingham might dismiss Gregory on the spot, or worse. Then—like a beam of light through the dark—Walsingham extended a hand to Gregory, who grinned and placed the bottle in it. Walsingham drank deep, with a wince at the burn.

  “Then they have to trust you,” he said grimly, replacing the bottle in the drawer.

  Kit let out his breath at last and sank into the chair beside Gregory. “They will,” he said. “When are you planning to raid his estate next?”

  Walsingham blinked. “I wasn’t,” he said waspishly. “Placing you in his employ was meant to relieve the need for that.”

  “I need you to,” Kit said. “Within two weeks. He’s testing me by asking for a warning.”

  Walsingham was no longer looking at Kit but somewhere over his shoulder, lost in the web of connections only he could see. “The twenty-first,” he said, after a moment. “Two o’clock. I’ll see to it. Marlowe, be careful. I need you where you are.”

  Emotions were Kit’s stock in trade. He catalogued them for a living, for the stage or for the palace. But the one that surged through him at those words, I need you where you are, that one he’d never felt before. Terror, certainly. The thought of the knife against his throat would not leave him, and if this gambit failed, he risked worse than that. But at the same time, he’d have accepted no other answer. Walsingham needed him to stay, and Kit needed it too. Risk aside, death aside. This was his plan, and he had to see it through.

  “We’ll need to work on the opposite end of this as well,” Walsingham said. “If Strange is depending on popular support, he’ll have men he trusts to muster it. Any names, any correspondences, you are to pass those directly to me, or to Gregory if I am indisposed.”

  Kit nodded. Whatever Strange was planning, the net would have been cast wide, and each contingency would have its own contingency. If his time in Mary’s service had taught him one thing, it was that a rebel’s partners mattered as much as the rebel. “I understand, sir.”

  Walsingham palmed the top of his cane, regarding Kit at a soft angle. “Do you know, Marlowe, I think you finally do.”

  No one could best the spymaster in the art of the backhanded compliment. Kit defied any man in the nation to try.

  “You’re still safe among them?”

  Kit shrugged. “I’ll have to be.”

  Walsingham nodded. “You will. Now, if you’ll excuse me. Gregory. Marlowe.”

  Gregory had risen straightaway, as if the half-formed request had been gospel. Kit followed suit a moment later, looking back at the spymaster. Walsingham hadn’t moved, but there was a faint twitch in his jaw that hadn’t been there before. Just before Gregory closed the door behind him, Kit heard a small gasp, the faintest grunt of pain. The sound of an ill man’s mask shattering.

  Gregory and Kit stood in silence outside the closed door. Neither of them dared to look at it, as though casting their eyes on the handle was an unforgivable invasion of privacy. Further down the corridor, Kit heard the murmur of voices, the familiar ripple of royal business.

  “He’ll recover,” Gregory said.

  “I know,” Kit said.

  He meant it, despite the tightness in his chest. Sir Francis Walsingham couldn’t die. Or, if he did, he wouldn’t die from illness. He would go out with fire and sword, not with the quiet whisper of sickness in the dark.

  The voice in Kit’s head knew better. He thought of the final scene to Tamburlaine’s sequel, the one he’d scribbled down with his back against a deadline. His cruel, conquering hero, the fierce Scythian warlord, laid into a grave by pestilence. An unsatisfying ending, but an honest one. Shall sickness prove me now to be a man, that have been termed the terror of the world? Kit had written it himself.

  “I know he will,” Kit said again.

  * * *

  —————

  He should have told Tom right away. It would have been the honest thing to do. The fair thing. Brave. But Kit hadn’t felt fair or honest since Walsingham’s messenger had cornered him on the banks of the Thames, and it took every scrap of bravery to live with the memory of Evan Lloyd’s knife against his throat. Something had to give. Something had to remain simple, comforting, safe. And that something, he’d decided, was Tom.

  Cruel as it was, there was also kindness to it. Tom’s relief when Kit lied—when he said he’d broken the cipher, that his task now was to observe Strange and nothing more—that relief justified everything. How could anything be wrong that made Tom pull Kit into his arms and kiss him until Kit’s body felt sanctified, every inch of him made holy? The truth would only have left Tom as hollow and nervous as Kit was, flinching at every shadow. There was no way for Kit to escape it, but that didn’t mean Tom had to live that way.

  “Thank God,” Tom murmured. Kit laid his head on Tom’s shoulder, losing himself in the gentle circles Tom traced along his back. Outside, rain beat against the windows facing Fleet Street, turning the roads outside to an impassable tangle of mud. “Christ, love, I’m so glad. You’ll be safe.”

  “I will,” Kit said, listening to the rain.

  * * *

  —————

  The tip about the raid was handed off without incident, and when Evan Lloyd returned on the twenty-second, it was clear that Kit had proved his worth to Strange, at least temporarily. What followed was a balancing act that pushed Kit to the very limit of his skill. Kit and Gregory kept in regular contact, meeting at taverns north or east of the city where prying eyes and curious ears were unlikely to follow. Kit asked Gregory the questions he’d been set by Strange through Evan—particulars of the Royal Navy, Walsingham’s suspicions of other members of the Stuart line, Lord Burghley’s designs on Douai—and Gregory gave him bits of information in return. Not lies, which would cost Kit the trust he’d so carefully built, but half-truths and insinuations, ones Kit embellished and packaged to prove his value to the rebels without putting Walsingham’s plans in too great jeopardy. Kit seldom met with Strange directly, but every so often Evan brought along a note in his patron’s broad, flowing hand, accompanied by a small purse as a token of gratitude. It was tainted money, but a bloody shilling went as far as a clean one in London.

  In the meantime, there was more to be done. Walsingham retained his avenue into Strange’s correspondence, and Gregory continued to pass Kit intercepted letters in groups of three and four. Strange seemed to rotate between ciphers, one designated for each recipient—smarter than Kit had originally given him credit for—but with enough late nights and stolen minutes, Kit forced the ciphers to crack one by one. Messages to Strange’s supporters in the country, just as Walsingham had suspected. Not every note contained a name, but every one that did went straight to Whitehall, and a fresh agent was dispatched in the direction of the suspect.

  And then there was the theater: rehearsals to haunt, actors to shout at for wrongly emphasizing a line, an irritated theater owner to mollify after the fact. To think that at one point in his life, writing plays had been Kit’s way to relax.

  “You’re coming at it too strong, love,” Tom said, as they cut from the Rose to Kit’s Shoreditch lodgings. Tom had
stopped by that day’s rehearsal on a rare afternoon off. It was the first time in ages he’d seen Kit at work, and Kit’s anxious style of artistic management had only gotten worse as the stress of intelligence work grew. “It’s already brilliant. You don’t need to work yourself to death fiddling with it.”

  Kit didn’t meet Tom’s eye. They kept their heads low as they passed through Bishopsgate, both refusing to see what sort of trophies were spiked above them. “I’m not fiddling. I’m improving.”

  This was a lie: he was fiddling. There were a hundred details he wanted fixed, angles adjusted, tones shifted, but none of it mattered, really. Kit knew he was hiding in work, tweaking minutiae to avoid thinking about his visits with Gregory, Walsingham’s gaunt face, the flash of a knife in the darkness. Cowardice, maybe, but there was no shame in self-deception. Not if it worked.

  Kit knew something was wrong from the moment he and Tom stepped inside the boardinghouse. He knew it from the knit of Mistress Talbot’s brows as she pointedly turned her back, resuming her conversation with another lodger. That was the look reserved for someone already on her mind. Someone who’d recently been asked for.

  Kit swallowed hard. There was no graceful way out of it now. He climbed the stairs, Tom behind him, each step like the ascent to the scaffold.

  When he stepped into his room, Thomas Kyd stood awkwardly near the window, arms folded as if warding off a worse chill than October had to offer. And there, leaning easily against the ladder that led up to the loft, stood Evan Lloyd.

  He smiled when he caught sight of Kit and pushed himself upright, unfolding his grasshopper-like limbs. Kit felt Tom’s eyes narrow, heard the beginning of a question, and for a moment he thought his own panic might overwhelm him. But the most important thing now was the work. He couldn’t let Evan see that he’d been startled. He needed to maintain cover, work through the interaction without giving himself away. After that, he could pick up the pieces of his life. But not until this was dealt with.

  “Good afternoon,” Kit said. “You might have sent word you were coming.”

  “I was in the neighborhood,” Evan said. “And Master Kyd has been very accommodating. I really am sorry about disturbing you.”

  “Quite all right,” Thomas Kyd said stiffly. He exchanged a panicked glance with Tom, and Kit turned his back on both of them. Every moment he thought about what his co-boarder and Tom might be thinking was a moment of inattention that might cost him everything.

  “Take a walk with me?” he said to Evan.

  Evan’s smile seemed genuine. “By all means.”

  “I won’t be long,” Kit said to Tom.

  “Don’t be,” Tom said. His voice landed like a hammer against an anvil, tossing out sparks. Kit led Evan downstairs without looking back.

  They walked side by side through the still-muddy expanse of Shoreditch, heading gradually north. The suburbs were unruly up here, tavern brawls and family disagreements drifting through open windows, the flap of clothes drying on Finsbury Fields between grazing livestock. It felt like home now—a hundred years away from the terrifying crush that had greeted his first steps into London. Now, walking with Evan Lloyd beside him, that old unease had returned. The notion that every bowed head or grasping hand wanted something, and would do whatever it took to secure it.

  “Apologies for that,” Evan said. “There’s never been anyone by when I’ve come before, so I assumed you lived alone.”

  “You don’t know the price of London lodgings then,” Kit said. “Watch your step.” He guided Evan around a fresh clump of manure, barely distinguishable from the surrounding mud. “You have news for me?”

  “Do you?”

  It was a fair question, and in Evan’s amiable tone it didn’t sound like an accusation. Still, it was hard not to hear it as one: if you don’t, what good are you to us? Fortunately, Gregory had made sure Kit was prepared.

  “Lady Arbella Stuart is their concern now,” Kit said, his voice carrying only to Evan and no farther. “Mary Stuart’s niece. She’s barely out of the schoolroom, but Cecil has it in his head that she or her guardians have their eyes on the throne. Naturally, I’ve done my best to encourage the idea.”

  True enough, as far as it went. Gregory had told him as much: the Stuart girl had as good a claim on the throne as her aunt had, if not the unscrupulousness or the pride. She was worth keeping an eye on, and Whitehall was doing so. If she wasn’t their primary focus—if that focus was reserved for the charismatic nobleman and his populist leanings—there was no cause for Evan Lloyd to know that.

  “Will Cecil send you off to the Stuart girl, do you think?” Evan said.

  Kit laughed. “I doubt it. He’s sent one of his more reliable agents to be her tutor. Can you imagine? I’d raise that girl into a hellion.”

  “So much the better,” Evan said with a grin. “I’d hate for you to miss the fun.”

  Kit held his breath. He doubted that Evan Lloyd shared his definition of “fun.”

  “You know the mistake Mary Stuart made,” Evan said. Kit could think of a few—treason, trusting an idiot like Anthony Babington, opening her doors and letting Kit in out of the rain—but Evan didn’t leave much time to wonder. “The Armada was always a risk. Relying on foreign forces. A stiff gust of wind blows in the wrong direction, and suddenly all your hopes are at the bottom of the ocean.”

  Kit bit his lip, refusing to let his unease show. There was no time for fear. This was what Strange had always hinted at. Armies raised from native soil. The anger of the people had always been theoretical, but it seemed that Strange was moving swiftly toward the concrete.

  “Taking a different approach isn’t easy,” Kit said, keeping his eyes on the muddy road ahead of him.

  “No,” Evan agreed. “It’s not. And it’s expensive. Costs more than even Lord Strange can manage.”

  It seemed as if Evan had slipped into a language Kit spoke only haltingly. “If you’re asking for a contribution to the cause,” Kit said carefully, “I regret to inform you that I’m renting one half of one room, and these boots are three years old.”

  Evan laughed. “No,” he said, “trust me, no thinking man would ask you to finance anything. Here’s the business. I know a man in Flushing, as staunch a believer as any of us. And the best goldsmith north of Florence. A forge that turns out more than jewelry, if you follow.”

  Kit couldn’t help himself. Between the nerves and the sheer madness of the suggestion, it was too much. He laughed, the sound bubbling up, uncalled-for. Church-sanctioned counterfeiters. Moneylenders in the Temple. If he put it in a play, Henslowe would accuse him of heavy-handedness. Well, God had always been an opportunist. Proclaim the gospel with whatever tools came to hand.

  “So you want me to go to Flushing,” Kit said.

  “You and me. I’ve asked Lord Strange his opinion, and he agrees.”

  The boldness of the plan drew Kit in. Too risky to coin in England, under the nose of the queen’s justice, and too dangerous to travel alone. The opportunity was more than Kit had dared to hope for when he’d donned the mask of the double agent and prayed it would hold. And now that mask would need to hold with double strength. He’d need protection on every front as he played both sides of a civil war, where either commander might slide a knife between his ribs to keep him from talking.

  Once in the Low Countries, Kit and Evan would meet with the goldsmith and arrange for the production of a sizable sum of money. Then, as Evan explained it, they’d work with a local fence—de Vries, perhaps, from the first letter?—to secure the arms England’s papists would need. The rest of the funds would be funneled back to Derbyshire by sea, under the pretense of a merchant outfit investing in one of Strange’s business ventures. That was as much as Evan knew. When they needed more details, Strange would provide them, and not a moment before.

  “You should get back,” Evan said. W
ithout saying anything, they’d reversed their path, tracing the muddy road back toward the bells of Shoreditch Church, the shrieks of Bedlam. They were only a few minutes’ walk from home, but Kit felt as though he’d slipped into a separate country, one connected to the London he’d known by the most delicate of threads. “Your friend doesn’t know my business, but he’ll ask more questions the longer you’re away.”

  It was a thoughtful consideration from Evan, smoothing Kit’s path into his other life. But it wasn’t Thomas Kyd that worried him. After the third night Kit stayed awake until sunrise reading the prologue of The Jew of Malta aloud with varying inflections until the verse lay flat, a less-than-forthcoming visitor would be a minor annoyance to him at most.

  No, it was Tom’s reaction that troubled him.

  “You’re right,” Kit said. “When do we leave?”

  “Few weeks,” Evan said with a shrug. “Enough time to set your affairs in order, if you have affairs to set. I’ll come by once Strange decides which ship will carry us.”

  Reasoning that if he had to play the role, he might as well do it properly, Kit clapped one hand on Evan’s shoulder, sending him off like a brother in arms. “Tell Strange, when you see him, that we won’t fail.”

  “We won’t,” Evan agreed.

  It was almost frightening, Evan Lloyd’s facility at disappearing. He had only taken a few steps north, the back of his blond head catching a fragment of sunlight. And then he had disappeared, lost among the shifting bodies around them, and Kit hadn’t seen where he’d gone.

  He blew out a long breath. Follow the money, he could hear Walsingham telling him. Follow the money, and you’ll find the conspirators, find the armies, find the threat. Counterfeiting coin was treason, but it was also the perfect way to lay a trap. Follow the trail, and track the wolf back to his den. The notion of leaving England left a chill in his stomach, but there was no time to consider that, not yet.