The English Agent

by Phillip DePoy

  Gelis screwed up his face, not quite understanding the question.

  “I owe a debt to you and to Miss Beak,” he answered. “I was never going to let you go to the Bell Inn and get yourself killed as well as herself. I did it to save you.”

  “You did it to save me,” Marlowe repeated.

  Marlowe looked around. The serene world of the Travelers’ camp belied everything he had ever heard about the people. There was absolutely no telling, in his mind, whether or not to trust this man.

  “First things first,” Gelis went on, seemingly unaware of Marlowe’s suspicions. “Did you catch them that assaulted me and mine?”

  How best to respond? Marlowe wondered. He didn’t want to give anything away. On the other hand, the facts were the facts, and easy enough to ascertain, especially if the stories about “Gypsy gossip” were true.

  “One’s dead in Maldon,” Marlowe said harshly, “another is dead in Delft, and the woman who shot you is, in actuality, a man. He’s escaped.”

  Gelis smiled. “Good. It’s good to tell the truth.”

  Marlowe took that in. “You already knew those facts.”

  “Aye,” Gelis admitted, looking into the fire. “But I didn’t know what kind of man you were. Mr. Greene.”

  “You want to know my real name.”

  “I do.”

  “Then let me see what sort of a man you are. Who killed Leonora Beak?”

  Gelis looked up, his expression gone to darkness. “If I knew that, I’d have that man in front of me now, instead of you.”

  “Where did you get the horse that’s pulling your wagon now?”

  Gelis winked. “Made a bargain with that stable boy at the Bell.”

  “What sort of bargain?”

  “Promised to take him with us on our travels,” Gelis locked eyes with Marlowe, but called over his shoulder. “Toby!”

  From behind one of the nearby wagons, the stable boy appeared.

  “Yes?” he answered, striding toward the fire.

  Then he saw Marlowe, and froze.

  “It’s all right, boyo,” Gelis assured him. “Mr. Greene, here, is helping us find him that murdered your mistress.”

  “We don’t need help from the likes of him,” the boy snapped, his face flamed red. “He abandoned Leonora and went off to London!”

  “What is this boy doing here?” Marlowe asked Gelis.

  “Tell Mr. Greene what you told me, Toby,” Gelis insisted calmly.

  “Why?” he wanted to know, somewhat belligerently.

  “Because Mr. Greene has been seen with the Queen,” Gelis answered in bizarre singsong.

  Toby went slack-jawed. “The Queen?” he muttered.

  “Have you not?” Gelis asked Marlowe.

  “I have not,” Marlowe answered honestly, “at least not in some time.”

  “But you are about her business,” Gelis prompted.

  “Possibly.” Marlowe turned to Toby. “What is it that you told Gelis? Tell me now.”

  Toby bit his upper lip, thinking, the process of which seemed extremely painful for him.

  “I am looking for the woman I love,” he answered a length, with the sort of fervency only youth could muster.

  Marlowe turned to Gelis, at a loss.

  “Our boy here,” Gelis said, clearly trying not to display amusement, “is smitten by the woman what was in the Bell with them other two, them that robbed me and mine.”

  “What?” Marlowe blinked once.

  “She is in trouble,” the boy said desperately. “I know it. She touched my hand when she took the horses from the barn. She smiled at me. No woman ever looked at me before that moment, not in the eye. She has feeling for me, I know that. And so I must help her. The others, the men she was with, they’ve captured her. Forced her to go along with them. I’m certain of that. And so I have to help her!”

  Marlowe did his best not to show amazement. “What on earth does this unfortunate, melancholy fantasy have to do with—?”

  “Let him finish,” Gelis encouraged. “Go on, Toby.”

  “I saw it in her eyes,” Toby continued, his voice growing in volume and intensity. “She wanted me to help her. That’s why I’m going to London with these Travelers. As she was getting on the horse, I saw a bit of paper in her boot. The top part stuck out and I read it.”

  “You can read?” Marlowe interrupted.

  The boy looked down. “Miss Beak taught me.”

  “Ah.” Marlowe sighed.

  “Tell him, then,” Gelis nudged. “Tell him what you read.”

  “It was a handbill of some sort. It said ‘Curtain Road, Shoreditch.’ And I reckon that’s a place to start. See what I might find out about her, and the villains that took her away from there.”

  Marlowe sat up straighter. “Curtain Road.”

  “Thank you, Toby,” Gelis said. “Time to bed down the horses.”

  “Yes.” Toby looked momentarily confused, and then he turned and vanished behind the wagon whence he’d come.

  Marlowe waited for a moment, then, lowering his voice, said to Gelis, “He doesn’t know that the woman he loves does not exist?”

  “He does not know that the woman he loves is a man,” Gelis said plainly. “Nor did I until you told me. He’d be desolated by such news. And, too, he’d not be quite so willing to help us to find the person in question.”

  “Well, yes.” Marlowe got to his feet. “You know what’s in Shoreditch, at Curtain Road, don’t you?”

  “A house of entertainment called The Theatre,” Gelis said. “Know it well. We all do.”

  “Yes, well, that’s the place where Ned Blank works.”

  “Who?”

  “Ned Blank,” Marlowe repeated. “The woman who has stolen Toby’s heart.”

  “You know him?”

  “Not only is he the greatest actor of female parts in London,” Marlowe answered, “but he may—I say he may—be the person who murdered Leonora.”

  Gelis shook his head. “No,” he said emphatically, “we would have seen—even Toby would have spotted that woman at the inn.”

  “Except if that woman were dressed as himself, as a man,” Marlowe rejoined.

  “No,” Gelis insisted. “We—there were no strangers at all, no newcomers at the inn for as long as we stayed there. It was all Travelers. I’m telling you: we would have seen them.”

  “Except for the fact that you did not, in fact, see the murderer.”

  Gelis looked down into his empty cup. “Aye.”

  “So.” Marlowe got to his feet. “While I appreciate your care for me, kidnapping me as you did to save my life, I must go to the Bell Inn. I must go to the scene of my comrade’s murder, and to watch and pray, see to her burial if need be. That is my task, a dismal one from which no effort, not even your good care, may prevent me.”

  “But,” Gelis began to protest.

  “You must realize,” Marlowe interrupted, “that Leonora’s death is a thread in the larger fabric of betrayal. Someone killed her for a reason. And that reason has to do with a great threat to our nation, and to our Queen.”

  Gelis nodded sagely. “I see. What would you have me do, then?”

  “Exactly what you were planning to do: go to London, enjoy a bit of theatre, and try to find that phantasm with whom young Toby has fallen in love. I may join you thereafter in London when I have finished my investigation at the Bell Inn.”

  Gelis stood, a bit clumsily, and offered his hand.

  “Done,” he said. “Poor Toby. Though, if I may say, all men fall in love with the woman they invent from their own desires and not the actual woman in question. It is a fearsome combination of longing and hope—and the image of a certain face.”

  Marlowe took Gelis’s hand. “Are all Travelers like you?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Are you all philosopher poets?”

  “If all life is a journey,” Gelis answered, “who would know it better than the man who never leaves the road? Mr. Gr
eene.”

  “It’s Marlowe, actually,” he answered softly. “Christopher Marlowe.”

  “At last,” Gelis sighed. “It’s good to tell the truth. Mr. Marlowe.”

  THIRTEEN

  The Bell Inn appeared deserted when Marlowe arrived. The night was nearly moonless and there were no lamps lit inside. He went around the inn and across the yard as quietly as he could to stable the horse Gelis had given him, a sturdy, if elderly, animal. Then he made his way back to the inn’s front door without a sound.

  He stood for a moment, listening. Somewhere in the distance a dog barked, but then was stilled. Owls called to one another. Stars blinked. The world was, in general, at peace.

  Judging the place to be safe, Marlowe opened the front door and slipped into the public room. His eyes adjusted to the darkness within, but it was still impossible to see anything clearly. He felt his way along table tops, bumping into chairs, until he reached the bar. After several clumsy minutes, he found tapers in a case on the floor. Lighting two from the embers in the fireplace, he set one on the bar in a small tabletop pricket and carried the other one before him. He took a few steps toward the kitchen.

  He could see, then, that the place was in pristine order, cleaned beyond mere tidiness. Who would have done that? It was a far different place from the one he had left only days before: a place soiled with blood, wrecked by brawling, and cursed with a corpse. Leonora might possibly have performed that task when she returned, but if she had spent most of her time attending to her father, as Gelis had said, could she have been so thorough?

  The most logical explanation was that Gelis’s wife had taken it upon herself to so stringently clean. But the place had a more military order, nothing like the relaxed environment of the Travelers’ camp.

  Lost in such thought, Marlowe almost missed the noise on the stairs. Shaken from his concentration, he realized that someone was creeping down the stairs from the upper rooms.

  The stairway was close to the end of the bar, opposite where Marlowe stood. As he had never been upstairs, he could only assume that the sleeping quarters were up there.

  He blew out the taper in his hand, but the one atop the bar was out of reach, and the footsteps were down the stairs.

  “Who’s there?” a brutal male voice demanded.

  Marlowe dropped down, placing the bulk of the bar in between himself and the hulk descending the staircase. Marlowe thought he could make out a wooden club in the man’s hand.

  The man hit the bottom of the stairs and roared.

  “Who’s there, I say? Who’s lit this candle?”

  Marlowe stood slowly, dagger in hand. In the dappling of the candle’s flame he thought he recognized the man. Racking his brain, it finally came to him.

  “You’re the baker,” Marlowe said. “You were in here the day of all the trouble.”

  The man’s head jutted forward as he tried to make out the speaker in the shadows. He took a step forward, and then Marlowe could see that he was holding a rolling pin in his hand.

  “I was here that day too, with my friend the doctor,” Marlowe said, lowering his blade and stepping into better light.

  “Yes,” the man said slowly, squinting to see Marlowe’s face. “You were. What be your business here now? The doctor’s gone.”

  Marlowe sheathed his dagger.

  “In short, I’m here to find the person who killed Leonora Beak.” He exhaled, feeling how difficult it had been to say those last few words.

  “Why?” the baker asked, clearly suspicious.

  “Because she was my comrade,” Marlowe explained, “as fine a traveling and fighting companion as I have ever known. And because I have been commanded to do so.”

  “Commanded?” the baker asked, his jaw jutting forward. “To find Leonora’s murderer? Who commanded you to do that?”

  “Are you the one who’s cleaned up and kept this place in order,” Marlowe asked, ignoring the baker’s question.

  “I’m asking you a question!”

  “And I’m not answering you.” Marlowe stepped from around the bar. “How fares Leonora’s father, our innkeeper?”

  “Why is that any of your—”

  “I have been told,” Marlowe interrupted, “by the very doctor who saved the innkeeper’s life, that even in a deep sleep a man may hear and know certain things that have happened around him. I wish to speak to Mr. Beak to see what he knows that he does not know he knows.”

  “To see what he—look here, London Boy,” the baker sneered, “I’m guarding the innkeeper from the very likes of you. And I’ll not move from that task until he’s up and about on his own. Now show yourself out like a good lad, or I’ll be forced to bash your brains, teach you a bit of country courtesy.”

  The baker took a few quick steps down the stairs. They were intended as a threatening move.

  Marlowe didn’t move, didn’t blink, didn’t breathe.

  “I said—” the baker began.

  “Please be reasonable,” Marlowe suggested steadily. “I have no quarrel with you, or desire to injure you. In fact, I’m grateful that you’ve taken such care with the inn.”

  “Boy,” the baker growled, lowering his head and raising his rolling pin.

  The baker, nearly twice Marlowe’s size, raged forward.

  Marlowe planted his body firmly in the path of the oncoming juggernaut, and then, at the last possible second, merely stepped sideways and behind the bar—Kyd’s tactic. The baker lumbered on, losing his balance, and crashed headfirst into the wall.

  Groggy but not fallen, he spun about.

  “We can go on like this if you insist,” Marlowe told him calmly, “but it’s really a waste of time and you’ll only end up with bruises—which you’ll have given to yourself.”

  Unwilling to hear such a reasonable assessment of the situation, the baker attacked again, snarling. Marlowe placed one hand on the bar and vaulted over it, landed, drew his rapier. He thrashed that blade across the baker’s forearm, the arm that held the rolling pin; down it clattered onto the floor. The baker, alas, kept moving, and flew into the bar, midsection first. The breath knocked out of him, he tried to stand, failed, and landed flat on his back with a thud to wake the dead.

  Sheathing his rapier, Marlowe knelt beside the baker.

  “I really am here to help. I’m going to find out who killed Leonora. And I’m going to punish that person in a very severe way. In front of witnesses.”

  The baker stared up at the ceiling.

  “I—I’d like to be one,” he gasped.

  “You’d like to be one what?” Marlowe asked.

  “Witness,” he managed to say, and then passed out.

  Marlowe smiled and stood.

  Taking the taper on the bar, pricket and all, he ventured up the stairway, his other hand on his rapier’s hilt.

  As he reached the top of the stairs he could see, down the narrow hallway, under a low ceiling, six doors. One was open, and a bit of candlelight flickered there.

  He moved carefully toward it. The entire inn was very quiet: no talking, no snoring, no groaning of dreams.

  He reached the lit doorway, peered in, and there lay the innkeeper, eyes wide.

  “Mr. Beak,” Marlowe said gently.

  Beak turned toward the sound of Marlowe’s voice, a little alarmed. When he saw Marlowe standing in the doorway, he exhaled noisily.

  “I heard all the trouble downstairs,” he said hoarsely, “and I thought there were assassins in my inn once more.”

  “Just the baker,” Marlowe told him, “and me.”

  “Well.” Beak closed his eyes. “At least it’s an assassin for the Queen.”

  Marlowe looked around the room. It was a simple one: a bed, a table, a taper, a washbowl, a chamberpot. A single window looked toward the stable. The bed was finely made, and the covers were clean. As Marlowe stepped lightly toward the innkeeper, the boards underfoot made very little sound. The inn was as well constructed as the innkeeper’s bed.

&nb
sp; “I am grieving for the loss of Leonora,” Marlowe told the older man.

  Beak sucked in a sudden breath, or a sob, and nodded, eyes still closed.

  “I’m going to find her killer,” Marlowe said.

  Beak nodded again, only once.

  “There was a chair in this room until recently,” Marlowe began.

  Beak opened his eyes. “Yes. Someone told you that my daughter was sitting here with me whilst I slept.”

  “Someone did,” Marlowe confirmed, “but there are also scrape marks in the wood on the floor here.”

  He pointed.

  Beak twisted his head and glared down. “I see.”

  “You were asleep when Leonora—when the killer came into the room,” Marlowe went on.

  “I was.”

  “Were you dreaming?”

  “How’s that?” Beak asked, raising his head ever so slightly.

  “Can you recall,” Marlowe insisted, “if you were dreaming.”

  “I—no, I cannot. What sort of a question is that?”

  “It is a question I have learned to ask,” Marlowe explained. “Dr. Lopez was my great teacher, and several of his lessons concerned the sleeping mind. While you are asleep, you may hear or even see things that happen around you in the waking world. Sometimes those things are translated into dreams. You may have knowledge of your daughter’s murderer locked in your brain.”

  “Well I can’t recall a dream,” Beak huffed.

  “Close your eyes.”

  “I’ve spent enough time with my eyes closed,” Beak protested.

  “Please, Mr. Beak,” Marlowe said a little louder. “We may, together, discover some small matter that would aid me in finding the killer. And if not, what is the harm? I’m only asking you to close your eyes.”

  “Christ,” Beak muttered. But he closed his eyes.

  “Now,” Marlowe began, as Lopez had taught him, “breathe in on a slow count of seven, hold for one, breathe out on a count of seven, and then don’t breathe.”

  Beak, somewhat reluctantly, did as he’d been told.

  “Again,” Marlowe encouraged.

  Again.

  “Good,” Marlowe said, softer than before, “keep going.”

  As Beak continued to breathe, Marlowe began to hum a single, low note. When Beak’s breathing became slower and softer, Marlowe decreased the volume of his humming and then stopped, matching his breathing pattern with Beak’s.