A Second Daniel

by Neal Roberts

  Noah is still too dismayed to shake off his indecision.

  Henry smiles. “Cheer up, my lad! You’re bringing my ‘niece’ to Billingbear. Come on, pack your bags!” He tosses an empty one to Noah.

  Noah shakes his head. “Oh, that’s most kind of you, Henry, but I couldn’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s such an imposition. What would Mistress Anne think?”

  “Nonsense. Do you know how many vacant rooms we have up there? And as far as Mistress Anne goes, she would be delighted to have Lady Jessica stay the whole summer, if she could arrange it. To have that, I’d warrant she’d even put up with you!”

  Could it be that, with a snap of his fingers, Henry will save them both from the danger of this outbreak?

  “But we’re both attending Essex’s party this evening,” says Noah.

  “Then, come first thing tomorrow. If there’s any change, just send a note by way of Cheerful.”

  “‘Cheerful?’ You mean ‘Cheerful Killigrew?’”

  “Do you know another?”

  Noah furrows his brow skeptically. “His given name’s not really ‘Cheerful,’ is it?”

  Henry laughs. “Now that would have been a long shot, wouldn’t it? For you to have guessed his given name to be ‘Cheerful’ and to have it turn out you were right. No,” he chortles, “that’s not his given name.”

  Noah waits expectantly, but in vain. “You’re not going to tell me his real name, are you?”

  “No point. Ever since you dubbed him that, it’s what everyone calls him. He calls himself that now.”

  “Isn’t he a bit young for such a long ride alone?”

  “It’s only just past Windsor, but I’ll send an adult to accompany him. You would not even ask if you’d seen him ride. He’s quite the accomplished equestrian.” Noah makes no reply, and Henry seems to be losing patience. “Look, old man. If you want to stay here and take your chances with the plague, there’s nothing I can do about it, but you shall not expose Jessica to this scourge. I’ll fetch her myself, if I must.”

  “That won’t be necessary, Henry. I shall write her immediately. Thank you so much! Still, I expect Jessica will wish to spend the night at Southwark, so she can pack in the morning, and I’ll stay here at the inn. We’ll follow you to Billingbear tomorrow.” He picks up a pen and a sheet of writing paper, when something occurs to him. “Oh, no!”

  “What now?”

  Noah cringes. “Jessica’s Aunt Beth.”

  Henry shrugs. “Bring her along.”

  Noah wipes his eyes with both hands, and regards Henry plaintively. “I think I’d rather chance the plague.”

  “Can’t be that bad.”

  “I think I’d rather catch the plague,” Noah mutters. He sighs, and begins writing.

  A closed coach pulls up outside. Noah and Henry look out of the window. From a remote door of the inn, Anthony and Francis Bacon emerge in barrister’s garb that looks so fine it might be fashioned of silk. But that cannot be, as only a Serjeant is permitted to wear the silk, and neither of the Bacons has yet qualified. Still, the visual effect is striking.

  Francis turns momentarily toward the inn, beaming like a man who’s been relieved of some awful burden, and whose time has come at last. They climb into the carriage and pull away south, turning east toward Essex’s lodge in Wanstead, where the party will take place.

  As Noah dispatches his note to Jessica, the entrance door downstairs bursts open and Jonathan and Arthur tramp in, talking excitedly. Noah and Henry look at each other.

  “You keep packing,” says Noah. “I’ll go and see what’s happening.” He goes downstairs.

  Arthur’s door is open and he’s ransacking his closet, evidently preparing for the journey to Billingbear. Jonathan, who’s gone out of the inn, now comes back into Arthur’s room, acknowledging Noah’s presence with a quick nod.

  Both Arthur and Jonathan look as though they’ve been up all night, and spent most of it in the woods. They’re sweaty. There are brambles in their hair, and scrapes on their faces. A few of their garments are torn. When Arthur turns away from his closet, his face appears scratched and slightly bloody, although he appears neither to know nor care.

  “Noah! Good to see you,” says Jonathan energetically.

  “Where have you two been?”

  Jonathan snorts. “Deptford!” he says, as though Noah’s question is amazing in some way.

  “At the docks?” Noah asks. Perhaps that explains their ruffled appearance.

  Jonathan pauses, and looks Noah up and down, with a look of combined surprise and pity. “You have not gone out today,” he declares.

  Noah shakes his head curiously.

  “Oh. Well … Marlowe is dead,” says Jonathan matter-of-factly.

  “What?”

  Although the news is having trouble penetrating Noah’s mind, it’s obviously got through to Henry, who must have been listening from the top of the stairs. “Oh, my God!” Henry says, and rumbles down the stairs so fast Noah thinks he might lose his footing and tumble. Instead, he strides right past Noah into Arthur’s room. “Marlowe is dead? Are you quite sure?”

  Jonathan looks at Henry with a kind of sulking anger. “Oh, quite, Master Henry! I saw his corpse lying on the floor. No mistake.”

  “But ha – how? How did it happen?”

  Jonathan turns on Henry with barely concealed fury. “I’ll tell you that, Master Henry. But I have a puzzle you might help me with first.”

  “Jonathan!” shouts Noah. “Show some respect.”

  Henry waves Noah off. “Which puzzle, Jonathan?”

  “Well, Marlowe spent all afternoon yesterday drinking at an inn at Deptford. There were three men with him. They spent all day together, talking and drinking. Incidentally, did you know that Marlowe was arrested a few weeks ago, then released?”

  Henry shakes his head.

  “Well, he was.” Jonathan turns his back to Henry and watches Arthur pack. “Anyway, these three men were apparently demanding something from Marlowe all day. The innkeeper couldn’t hear what it was, but he didn’t care, so long as they kept drinking and paying. So, I asked the innkeeper whether he heard Marlowe’s response to all this hectoring.”

  Noah can hold his tongue no longer. “Jonathan, why are you and Arthur so weatherbeaten?”

  Jonathan smirks at Arthur, who turns away, chagrined. “Well,” he says, “I had to ask more than once, didn’t I?” He tosses Noah a conspiratorial smile. “So, I asked the innkeeper whether he heard Marlowe’s response. He insisted, for a while, that he hadn’t. Then, he suddenly remembered Marlowe repeating the same phrase over and over. ‘Tell … some woman whose name the innkeeper couldn’t recall … he can’t have it!’ He suddenly remembered that the woman’s name was from the Old Testament, ‘a Jew name’ — one of the judges — so I put the fear of God in him and offered him half a crown, and he came up with the name, just like that!” He snaps his fingers.

  “What was the name?” asks Henry.

  Jonathan stands defiantly before Henry. He lowers his face and looks up insolently. “Deborah!” Jonathan spits out, studying Henry’s reaction. “‘Tell … Deborah … he can’t have it!’”

  The air in the room is stagnant and warm. In an instant, all the blood drains from Henry’s face.

  Noah breaks the silence. “I don’t understand. Who is Deborah?”

  Henry looks as though he’s been slapped in the face, and says nothing.

  Jonathan smirks. “Why don’t you tell him, Master Henry?”

  Henry turns to Noah. His voice cracks. “The innkeeper misunderstood. It wasn’t a woman’s name. It was ‘Devereux.’”

  To Noah, the two names sound nearly identical. “Who’s that?”

  Henry turns back to Jonathan, as though pleading to be relieved of the burden of further explanation, but Jonathan seems to be perversely enjoying himself. “Devereux,” resumes Henry gravely, “is the surname of the Earl of Essex.”

  No
ah is infuriated by Jonathan’s trouncing of Henry’s feelings. His face reddens and he moves it up against Jonathan’s, so that they nearly touch. “I’ve had about enough of this, Jonathan. Don’t you know that Marlowe was a friend of Master Henry’s? Now, you will answer me without further ado. Who were the three men with Marlowe yesterday?”

  Jonathan’s smile falls away, and he answers. “Nicholas Skeres, Robert Poley … ” he studies Henry’s face again, “and Ingram Frizer.”

  Henry stands deathly still, winces, and closes his eyes. For the first time, Jonathan’s expression shows a hint of sympathy.

  Noah asks, “How was Marlowe murdered?”

  Jonathan passes the question along, this time calmly. “Master Henry?”

  Henry turns to Jonathan, shakes his head, and speaks with apparent certainty. “A stiletto through the right eye. Ingram Frizer. Is that right?”

  Jonathan nods.

  “Well, Jonathan,” says Henry sadly, “it looks as though you’ve found your man. Stephen Rodriguez was almost certainly murdered by Ingram Frizer.”

  “I suppose you and I have both lost one to the earl’s men now.” Although Jonathan had evidently hoped for some type of apology from Henry for his refusal to acknowledge the earl’s responsibility in Graves’ death, he obviously doesn’t have the heart to seek it now. Instead, his face is pure pity, and his eyes well up with tears. “I’m deeply sorry for your loss, Master Henry.”

  Henry nods gravely. “Thank you, Jonathan. I’m sorry for your loss, as well. Sorry for Graves. Sorry for Marlowe. Sorry for all England. Here was a poet. When comes such another?”

  Chapter 17

  “WHAT A FOOL I’ve been!” says Noah. “The whole picture didn’t appear to me until just now, when Jonathan told us that Marlowe had been arrested and released.”

  Noah and Henry are briefly alone in Noah’s apartment, where the meeting that assembled unprompted in Jonathan’s room will soon reconvene behind closed doors.

  “What hadn’t appeared to you?” asks Henry.

  Noah ignores the question. “I know from my law practice that people who are arrested, then quickly released, are often known to be former Walsingham agents.”

  “Yes, that’s true. They’re often picked up for information, or to be given instructions.”

  He turns to Henry. “Marlowe was a former Walsingham agent, wasn’t he?”

  Henry nods.

  “Just as Rodriguez was! And, as it turns out, both those former Walsingham agents were murdered by the same man, who happens to spend time in the company of the same attendants of the same earl. What’s more, the only two surviving Walsingham agents I know are you and Lopez. And you two are each aligned in some way with Essex! Am I right so far?”

  Henry nods again.

  “All right, Henry. That seals it! The Earl of Essex is appropriating Walsingham’s former spy network to his own purposes. Isn’t he?”

  There’s a moment of silence, in which Henry appears to consider how to respond.

  But Noah cannot wait. “Those who join Essex are put to work. Those who don’t … are put to death!”

  Henry seems confounded. “Until just now, I would have called you mad to say so … but no longer. However, without proof presentable to a magistrate for adjudication, it’s mere suspicion.”

  Noah snorts. “Suspicion bordering on a certainty. You’ve been fighting off this conclusion yourself, Henry! Haven’t you? How could you neglect for so long to ‘call the constable’ on this? Don’t you realize what a threat Essex will be to Her Majesty, once he assembles his own international spy network, leaving her with none?” He smacks his forehead. “Ach! As soon as we realized that Essex was involved, I felt in my bones that we’d stumbled onto a plot! Why did it take me until now to trust my instincts, and see it for what it is?” He mutters, almost to himself: “I must stop him!”

  There’s a hesitant knock at the door.

  “Please, wait outside a moment!” says Noah, with more irritation than he would have liked. He turns back to Henry and suppresses his voice.

  “Didn’t you say some weeks ago that Cecil is Walsingham’s successor?”

  Henry nods, but then wavers. “Yes, but Robert succeeded him in name only. In fact, Robert was never able to recover Walsingham’s files, nor his contacts.”

  “I’ll give you odds Essex has both.” Noah glowers at Henry. “This information must be given to Sir Robert Cecil. If you won’t do it — and promptly, Henry — I will.”

  Henry nods somberly. “Yes. Cecil must be warned.”

  Noah rubs his temple. “I don’t know how I can possibly withhold this from Marie.”

  “There’s no need for her to know until she returns from the Continent, is there?”

  “I suppose not. And it’s not the kind of thing one could safely put in correspondence, anyway. Not in these suspicious days.”

  Henry agrees. “Besides, Marie has no interest in affairs of state. She’s interested in prosecuting the man who murdered her husband. When she returns, you or Jonathan can surely tell her that you suspect Frizer, without dragging this whole Essex business into it.”

  “Tell her about Frizer without telling her that Frizer may have committed her husband’s murder at Essex’s urging?” Although Noah’s voice has subsided, his mind still works feverishly, and he begins to pace. “Perhaps you’re right. Perhaps she need not know yet. Oh, I hate like the devil to involve her in this Essex affair more than absolutely necessary. It would only exacerbate her jeopardy.”

  He stops pacing, as he realizes there’s no more to be accomplished with Henry alone. He seizes the doorknob, then pauses a moment, lost in thought. At last, he opens the door. Jonathan and Arthur enter meekly, their eyes darting about, obviously aware that excited words have been exchanged.

  Henry takes a seat on the upholstered chair, while Noah rests on the edge of the bed. Jonathan and Arthur, mindful of their soiled clothing, sit on the wooden floor with their legs folded.

  “I don’t understand,” says Arthur. “Master Henry, how did you know it was Frizer who killed Marlowe?”

  “As I told Master Ames some weeks ago, Robert Poley, whom you two know as the drunkard Bob, had said he knew the right man to punch a hole in Meyrick’s eye … ”

  “Too bad he didn’t do it!” interjects Jonathan. “Meyrick, that sallow sack of pus, was standing over Marlowe’s body when I first saw it.”

  Henry resumes. “I learned only two days ago that the stiletto man’s name was ‘Ingram Frizer,’ and that he could sometimes be found in the company of Skeres and Poley. It was just bad luck you didn’t encounter him at the Boar’s Head.”

  Arthur chimes in. “Or good luck. If Frizer had been there, as well, they might have fought it out, and we’d all be under investigation, in prison, or worse. It was only after Skeres realized he was outnumbered that he gave up Jonathan and … Goodman Graves, may he rest in peace.”

  Jonathan sniffs. “Graves lived only a few hours more. It wouldn’t have made much difference to him if there’d been a wholesale slaughter.”

  Noah scowls. “Don’t say that, Jonathan. It made a world of difference to him that you survived. And who knows if you would have, if there’d been, as you say, a ‘wholesale slaughter?’”

  “How would you know that Graves felt that way, Master Ames?” asks Jonathan.

  Noah weighs whether Jonathan’s use of ‘Master Ames’ is intended as a jibe, but he can see that he’s simply lapsed back into his old form of address. “Do you forget, or did you not know? I went to speak with Graves at Creechurch, and arrived just after you left. He told me he regarded you as the son he never had.” He watches Jonathan walk to the window and stare outside to conceal his grief. “He asked me to watch out for you, so please avoid getting yourself killed or disbarred. He helped save our lives, and I owe his memory quite enough already.”

  Henry chimes in. “In that case, Noah, why don’t we bring Master Hawking to Billingbear with us, and get him out of Londo
n during this blasted plague season?”

  Arthur is surprised. “Is there plague about?”

  Noah nods. “Two cases in Southwark.”

  Arthur rises and goes to Jonathan. “Jon, it’s too dangerous for you to remain in London, with Essex’s men all about. I have to go with Master Henry, and you shall have no one here to back you up. Now there’s plague, as well. Why don’t you come with us?”

  Jonathan shakes his head slowly and turns toward the others, his face now composed. “Thank you very much, Master Henry, but, as you said, I know my man now, and I will not willingly hold the Rodriguez investigation in abeyance.”

  “But what can you accomplish here alone, Jonathan?” reasons Henry. “Just knowing who did it is insufficient. You must prepare to prove that Frizer committed Rodriguez’s murder. How likely are you to accomplish anything now, with Frizer being investigated for the murder of a much more famous man? Let things calm down first. Besides, Frizer could get the gallows for Marlowe’s murder, even without a conviction for an additional murder.”

  Jonathan shakes his head in disbelief. “Master Henry, your faith in criminal justice mystifies me. The murder of Christopher Marlowe will not be investigated. Not really. And even though Frizer is clearly the one who did it, he’ll not be prosecuted for it.”

  “Why not?” asks Henry.

  Jonathan rolls his eyes. “Because there’s someone having great influence with the Queen who will prevail upon her to forego such prosecution … just as he’s frustrated my investigation into the murder of Stephen Rodriguez by the same man. Do you think me dense? I strongly suspect that the murders of Rodriguez and Marlowe were ordered by Essex. If that’s correct, then these were both state murders, for which the state will not willingly prosecute itself, nor its own henchmen.”

  “Jonathan,” says Henry, simulating the very voice of reason, “while we genuinely admire your tenacity and courage in wishing to remain here to investigate, it simply makes no sense in light of the plague. What if you come down with it? Who is here to nurse you? What if you fail to survive it? Who will avenge Rodriguez’s murder then?”