The English Agent

by Phillip DePoy

  * * *

  At The Curtain Theatre, the sun had gone and the show was over. Paget and Morgan sat whispering to each other as the last of the crowd dissipated. Ned Blank, in his street clothes, his face washed of makeup, ambled toward their box. When they saw him coming they stopped talking.

  “Well?” Ned asked.

  Morgan sipped in a breath.

  “I thought you were quite believable as a man,” Paget smirked.

  “Bite my bollocks,” Ned responded politely.

  “We’ve had a visitor,” Morgan said softly.

  “Sorry?” Ned responded.

  “Christopher Marlowe,” Paget added.

  “Christ!” Ned exploded. “That bastard will ruin my career yet!”

  “You misunderstand,” Morgan said. “He’s just come from Chartley. He saved Mary’s life. He’s one of us.”

  “Says who?” a voice from the shadows called out.

  Everyone turned in the direction of the commanding voice, and the rotund, slovenly figure of Thomas Kyd ambled into the fading light beside the box.

  “Well, well,” Ned sneered. “Come to steal a few lines from Lyly, have you?”

  “I came to see your debut as a man, Ned,” Kyd answered grandly. “I’m sorry I missed it.”

  “Got here too late for the show, did you?” Ned asked. “Was it an extra ale or a little boy that kept you?”

  “Oh you misunderstand,” Kyd said, smiling. “I saw the whole show, the whole wretched show—I’m still waiting for your debut as a man.”

  Ned growled and drew a small silver dagger.

  Kyd’s smile widened. “You know better than to point that thing at me, boy. I’ll cut off your hand.”

  The last of the crowd was gone. Kyd drew nearer.

  “Now, you were saying,” Kyd went on, “that Marlowe saved Mary’s life?”

  Paget and Morgan nodded.

  “He told us,” Morgan said.

  “If he says so,” Kyd allowed, “then it’s true. In general he’s a great one for truth. But if he did save Mary’s life I can assure you that he did it in service to Walsingham. He’s not one of us. Not even a little bit.”

  “Why would he save Mary’s life,” Ned began, irritated beyond reason, “if he’s not on our side? If she’s dead, that’s an end to it!”

  “He saved her life, imbecile, to gain her confidence so that he might ferret out conspirators. You didn’t tell him anything, did you?”

  Kyd eyed Morgan and Paget.

  “Nothing he didn’t already know,” Paget said indignantly.

  “Christ.” Kyd rubbed his eyes. “What did you say?”

  “We just—we just told him where Sidney was,” Morgan stammered.

  Kyd froze for a moment. The smile left his lips.

  “Gentlemen,” he said to Paget and Morgan, “I no longer care what you know or say about my private life. You cannot hurt me now, I see that. You’re too stupid to know what to do. So I divorce myself from you and your cause as of this moment. Ned, you’re my witness. I no longer have anything to do with this affair. If these idiots don’t realize they’ve been duped by a college boy, they won’t have much sway any more. And so: adieu.”

  With that Kyd turned very delicately and vanished, once again, into the shadows.

  * * *

  Marlowe stood in Walsingham’s smaller office, shifting his weight impatiently from one leg to the other. He felt he’d been waiting for hours, though only moments had passed.

  Sidney was in a nearby closet, a small room with no tables or chairs. Incapable of staying on his feet, he’d sunk to the floor, his head rolled backward. Marlowe found a guard to stay at that door, and then sent word for Walsingham.

  At last Walsingham burst into the room. His aspect was more disheveled than Marlowe had ever seen it.

  “Why do you have Philip Sidney in a guarded room?” he demanded.

  “Impossible though it may be to believe,” Marlowe answered carefully, “Philip Sidney is the assassin.”

  Walsingham shook his head. “You have been misinformed.”

  “Paget and Morgan gave him away,” Marlowe said firmly. “Then Penelope Rich confirmed it. And finally, Sidney himself admitted it to me. He has an audience with Her Majesty in a few days. He says he wants to persuade our queen to allow the presentation of a revised version of some masque written in her honor. He may have intended to work his treachery then, during this audience, or he may have planned to somehow incorporate murder into the masque.”

  Walsingham closed his eyes.

  “I am rarely surprised,” Walsingham admitted. “How is it that I have not seen this?”

  “Because,” Marlowe answered without thinking, “Sidney’s is an irrational motive. His mind did not make this decision, it was made with another organ, and for a reason without politics or reason. It was made in a world much different from your own.”

  “You said that Penelope confirmed his treachery.” Walsingham nodded. “You found him with her.”

  “I did.”

  “And you are certain of what you are telling me.”

  “I am. He’s very drunk, in the closet nearby. Shall I bring him in?”

  Walsingham sat. “No. Let me think.”

  “I am eager to return to the task of finding Leonora’s murderer,” Marlowe said.

  Walsingham smiled ever so slightly. “I thought you said that she was murdered by Ned Blank.”

  “But you knew that wasn’t true.”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “May I not leave all this to you, then?” Marlowe was unable to hide his impatience. “You have all the things that you wanted: firm proof of Babington’s part in the plot, knowledge of the invasion, and now you even have the assassin in a small, guarded room right next door. Let me go.”

  “If only it were that simple,” Walsingham lamented. “You have no idea of the reticence Her Majesty exhibits with regard to her favorites. And Sidney—he is a great poet and she loves him. I cannot simply do away with him. Not here in London, at any rate.”

  Marlowe could see the gears whirring in the spymaster’s mind.

  “Yes, not in London,” Walsingham said at length. “You must return to the Netherlands.”

  “No!” Marlowe snapped.

  Walsingham eyed Marlowe as he might glare at an unruly child. “As you know, the death of William the Silent has encouraged Spanish forces in that region, and the war there rages more violently than ever. You go to Zutphen. You take Sidney with you. You join our forces there against the Spanish troops. And then Philip Sidney will, alas, be killed in battle there.”

  “I suppose that’s possible,” Marlowe said hesitantly, “but Sidney’s a great swordsman, and a brilliant man at arms. His better chances lie in survival, even victory.”

  “You misunderstand,” Walsingham said softly. “You will see to it that he is killed. A pistol shot from behind.”

  Marlowe froze. His heart began to pound.

  “I would never,” Marlowe began.

  “He means to kill the Queen!”

  “He is your daughter’s husband!” Marlowe countered. “For her sake alone, I would never murder Philip Sidney!”

  “What did you imagine was the purpose of the Surety Act? Why do you suppose it was given to you? So that you would kill when necessity dictated. And Philip Sidney needs to die for his vile treason!”

  “I—I can’t do it.” Marlowe shook his head. “You know that I can kill a man when he tries to kill me—”

  “His intent is to kill the Queen!”

  “But to shoot a man in the back,” Marlowe began, sweat breaking at his hairline.

  “Then Lopez will do it,” Walsingham interrupted angrily. “He is there in Zutphen, under cover. Take Sidney to him, tell him what to do. You will watch the assassin carefully until then. Don’t allow him to escape, do you understand? You will leave tomorrow, you and Sidney. Off to war. It is my command.”

  Without another word Walsingham rose and left the room
.

  A guard came in immediately.

  “Food, bath, and bed,” the guard said simply, “this way.”

  Stunned, all Marlowe could do was follow, straining to understand what had just transpired.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Marlowe’s gray stone bedchamber at Hampton Court was small. Windowless, it held only a bed, a small table, and a chamberpot. He had bathed and eaten in another part of the Hall, and then a guard had taken him to the small room. Laid out on the bed was a soldier’s uniform without insignia. Marlowe sat on the edge of that bed, staring at the suspicious uniform.

  When the door scraped open he was stunned to see a familiar figure in the doorway.

  “Frances?”

  Frances Walsingham—now Frances Sidney—stood frozen, lit only by the single taper on the small table by Marlowe’s bed. Her eyes were red and her face was sallow. She was wearing a simple blue dress, and her hair was down.

  “May I speak with you?” she asked, her voice barely above a whisper.

  A thousand images seared through his mind. He saw Frances dressed as a man when he’d rescued her from Malta, wielding a rapier better than any man could. He saw her sleeping in the French countryside, and riding next to him through wild forests. He saw the moment she bid him farewell, the moment when he thought he would never see her again. All in the blink of an eye.

  “I’ve had a revelation about you,” he said, standing up. “I realized that I loved you primarily for your fire, the force of your life.”

  “I don’t understand,” she said, frozen in the doorframe.

  “Nor do I,” he admitted. “Come in.”

  “I will not. I’ve only come to tell you that I know my father’s plan—”

  “Listen,” Marlowe interrupted, “you have nothing to fear; I told Lord Walsingham that I could not kill Sidney.”

  “I know my father’s plan and I endorse it,” she continued as if Marlowe had not spoken. “Philip Sidney is in love with another woman, a vacuous puppet who tried to murder our Queen; and now he would commit the same unimaginable crime—for her sake. If I could dress as a man once more and go with you to Zutphen, I would kill him myself.”

  Marlowe stared, unable to talk.

  “I have brought you a gift.” Her voice was ice.

  She held out a small package, something wrapped in purple damask and tied with a golden rope. Marlowe moved closer and took it.

  “Thank you, Frances,” he began. “I don’t know what to—”

  “Don’t thank me,” she snapped impatiently. “Open it.”

  He did, untying the rope and unfolding the damask. That fine fabric was wrapped around a wheel-lock pistol.

  “That is one of the firearms used to kill William the Silent. Don’t bother asking me how I obtained it. Only use it now to kill my husband. Will you swear?”

  Marlowe stared down at the weapon.

  “Frances,” he said at length, “I understand that your heart is broken—”

  “You really are an idiot,” she interrupted again. “I’m not asking you to take my revenge. I’m asking you to eliminate a traitor, a man who would plunge our nation into chaos. And I’m asking you to use this particular weapon for Philip Sidney’s sake. I want you to show it to him before you fire, explain its provenance. He will appreciate the grim poetry of it. Don’t you think?”

  Marlowe looked deeply into her eyes.

  “I have no wish to do as Philip Sidney has done,” he began, “and murder for the sake of a woman I love.”

  She shook her head. “You don’t love me,” she insisted. “You love—love. And the more impossible that love is, the better you love it. You and I can never be together, so I am a safe object of your ardor. Safer still: a woman who is dead.”

  Marlowe’s head pounded and his eyes betrayed his surprise.

  “Yes,” Frances went on, “I know about my sister—my half sister. Leonora was, by all accounts, a brave woman.”

  “A remarkable person of any gender,” Marlowe managed to answer. “But I do not love her, and never did. I confess I have, foolishly, just realized that she was your sister. I—I should have seen the resemblance.”

  Frances glanced downward. “She looked like me?”

  “A little. But the resemblance was more in spirit than in flesh.”

  She met his eyes. “You said you loved her fire.”

  He drew in a deep breath. “I did.”

  “Marlowe, take this pistol,” Frances said, a hint of desperation in her voice. “Hide it away. Use it when the time is right. Not for my sake. You must do it for—you understand the grander scheme.”

  Without another word or glance, she was gone.

  Marlowe looked down at the pistol once again. All he could think about was that she had called him Marlowe—not Kit.

  * * *

  In another room, Philip Sidney lay sleeping in a much more elaborate bed. It was nearly eighty feet square. The bed was large enough for five people, and covered in fine white silk and satin. There was a private closet for the chamberpot, a dozen chairs, and a separate dining area. A fire blazed in the hearth, and several windows admitted the moon’s clear light. The stones in all the walls were obscured by elaborate tapestries depicting pastoral scenes from Edmund Spencer’s The Shepheardes Calender, commissioned by Philip for the room. It was the room in which he slept with his wife, Frances Walsingham.

  She stood over him, watching him snore, trying to think if there had ever been a time when she cared for him at all.

  Beside him on the bed was a uniform exactly like the one on Marlowe’s poorer bed.

  After a moment she planted her feet, took hold of the coverlet upon which her husband lay, and pulled with all her might. She had done it many times before. He began to slide and then to topple, off the bed and onto the floor.

  He shivered, opened his eyes for a second, mumbled incoherently, and then fell back to sleep.

  Frances dropped the covers over him and stepped around to the other side of the bed.

  As she undressed, she prayed: When he is dead, when Marlowe has killed him, let him stay silent. Let him not haunt me the way my half sister has haunted Kit.

  * * *

  Backstage at The Curtain Theatre, Thomas Kyd sat at a dressing table by candlelight, staring at himself in the looking glass.

  Ned entered so softly that his feet made no din, but not so softly that Kyd did not pull out his dagger and turn around, smiling.

  “I thought you’d gone for the night,” Kyd said.

  “I was worried about you.”

  “I doubt that.” Kyd kept his dagger where Ned could see it.

  “Look,” Ned began, “you’ve got us both in a stew of shite. These fobs, Maggot and Poison, they’ll be the death of us. Both.”

  “Morgan and Paget. They can only tell an idiot’s tale, filled with sound and fury, signifying exactly nothing.”

  “Good line,” Ned admitted, “but it don’t get us clear of the danger, you and me.”

  “What would you suggest, Ned?”

  “Tour of the provinces. Rouse Lord Strange’s Men; take a cart, imitate the Gypsies, and get our dicks out of London. We’ll do your stupid Hamlet play.”

  “You’d go back to playing Ophelia?”

  “No,” Ned railed.

  “Well you can’t play Hamlet!”

  “I was thinking Ophelia’s brother.”

  “What’s this really about, Ned?” Kyd put away his knife.

  “Marlowe,” Ned said simply. “He’d just as soon give me up for a murder I ain’t done: the woman what nearly broke my back.”

  “No,” Kyd assured him. “Marlowe wants the truth. He’s not interested in you if you didn’t do it.”

  “Still, I’m afraid of him.”

  Kyd stood. “As am I. Let’s find a cart. We’ll go to Stratford first. They love me there.”

  “There’s just one more thing we have to do before we leave London,” Ned allowed casually.

  “Christ,�
� Kyd muttered, “tell me about it when I have drink in my hand.”

  With that Kyd lumbered out the stage door; Ned followed after.

  * * *

  In a paneled room at Hampton Court, lit with a dozen candles, Walsingham stood tapping his foot, staring at a door at the far end of the chamber, willing it to open. His skullcap was too tight. His eyes were red from lack of sleep. And the entirety of his patience had vanished.

  At last the door flew open and Elizabeth sailed in.

  “This is quite a late hour for a chat,” she sniped.

  “I have incontrovertible proof,” he responded, without the usual ceremony.

  The Queen was momentarily taken aback by her spymaster’s abrupt tone.

  “Mary conspires with Babington to murder you, invade England, and take the throne.”

  He knew that hammering the Queen with such a blunt presentation would irritate her, but he knew it would also stress the urgency of the matter.

  The Queen took a moment to compose her response.

  “Proof?” she asked curtly.

  Walsingham held out Marlowe’s letters, the original and the decoded copy.

  “In Babington’s own hand,” he said, “addressed to Mary.”

  She glanced at the pages. “Marlowe obtained this information.”

  He nodded.

  “So quickly.” The Queen sat in the only chair in the room, a sturdy wooden one with high rounded sides and no back.

  “Meaning that communication between Babington and Mary has been ongoing.” Walsingham lowered the papers.

  “Yes.” Her voice was strangely forlorn.

  “It’s more than enough to execute them all.”

  “No.” Elizabeth stared into space. “I will not order the death of my cousin.”

  “Once removed,” Walsingham sniffed.

  “I won’t do it!” The Queen roared quite suddenly.

  “Your Majesty,” Walsingham began.

  “But arrest Babington, and all his cronies,” she interrupted. “Is John Dee involved?”

  “I think not.”

  “That manuscript he acquired from Rudolf?”

  “Thus far a mystery,” Walsingham admitted, “but I have arranged to acquire it.”

  “You will make Mary’s dungeon more secure.”

  “Already so ordered.”

  “Have you discovered the particulars of this newest assassination attempt?”