“Of course,” the boy said, tucking the note into his boot.
“Have a care with that note,” Dim warned. “Charcoal smudges.”
The boy glared at Dim. “If it is too smudged,” he said indignantly, “I’ll just tell Leviticus what it said.”
“You can read?” Dim asked, failing to hide his surprise.
“Christ,” the boy muttered. “Yes I can read.”
Dim nodded. “Well, I ought not to be astonished. Your older brother can read too, this I know. You’re as clever as he.”
“The difference is,” the boy said, heading for the theatre exit, “that Ned always gets caught, and I never do.”
With that he disappeared into the moon-made shadows, out the door and into the night.
HISTORICAL PERSONAGES AND SALIENT FACTS
1. Christopher Marlowe was born in Canterbury 1564. He attended Christ Church Cambridge, wrote poetry and plays (notably Dr. Faustus, Dido, The Jew of Malta, Tamburlaine), and was allegedly killed in a tavern brawl in 1593. However, so many conspiracy theories exist about that event that the truth remains elusive.
2. Thomas Kyd (1558–1594) was, in 1585, London’s greatest playwright. Author of The Spanish Tragedy, he also probably wrote versions of Hamlet, King Lear, and dozens of other plays long before those stories were used by Shakespeare. In 1593 he was taken to the Tower of London and tortured, owing to treasonous and blasphemous writings found in his rooms. He said they were actually written by Marlowe. He emerged from prison a broken man, and died less than a year later, his greater efforts vanishing into obscurity.
3. Dr. Rodrigo Lopez (1525–1594) served as physician-in-chief to Queen Elizabeth beginning in 1581. He held that lofty post until just before he was executed in 1594 for plotting to poison the Queen. A Portuguese Jew, he is the only royal doctor in English history to be so executed. He was Marlowe’s Jew of Malta and Shakespeare’s Shylock.
4. Sir Francis Walsingham (1532–1590) was Queen Elizabeth’s principal secretary from 1573 until his death. He is the man for whom the term spymaster was invented.
5. Balthasar Gérard (1557–1584) was a professional French assassin and the murderer of Dutch independence leader William of Orange, also called William the Silent. Already a Roman Catholic admirer of King Philip II of Spain, Gérard was tempted by Philip’s offered reward of 25,000 crowns to anyone who would kill William. While Gérard succeeded in that task, he was immediately apprehended and his torture was unusually brutal, even by Elizabethan standards. First he was lashed with a whip, then his back was smeared with honey and a goat was ushered in to lick the honey. (Goats apparently have tongues that are abnormally rough.) When the goat wouldn’t touch the body, Gérard was hanged by his arms and a three-hundred-pound weight was tied to each of his big toes. Most creatively of all, he was given shoes made of uncured dog skin and then his feet were set near a fire. The dog skin cured, shrank, and slowly crushed the assassin’s feet to rubble. Then his skin was torn off and his armpits were branded. Sizzling bacon fat was poured over his head. There was more of the same for days. (The Dutch declared that they had learned a few techniques from the Spanish Inquisition.)
6. William the Silent (1533–1584) was the prime mover of the Dutch revolt against the Spanish, engendering the Eighty Years’ War. (That conflict eventually resolved itself in the complete independence of the Netherlands in 1648.) Because of his rebellion against the Spanish King Philip II, William was declared an outlaw in 1580. He was assassinated by Balthasar Gérard in Delft in 1584. Tourists can still see bullet holes made that day in the wall at his palace, the product of wheel-lock pistols.
7. Robert Armin (1563–1615) was the leading comic actor in the troupe most associated with William Shakespeare (after Will Kempe parted ways with Shakespeare). Armin also wrote comedies, including a play called A Nest of Ninnies. His work greatly improved the nature of comic roles, changing them from idiot servants to wittier characters, a more sophisticated lot. As his renown grew, many provincial actors copied his style, even claiming to be the man, giving rise to the notion that he was capable of being in many places at the same time.
8. Sir Philip Sidney (1554–1586) was one of England’s leading poets in Elizabeth’s court. Also a scholar, soldier, and deadly swordsman, his great works include a grouping of sonnets called Astrophel and Stella, which lament his unrequited love for Penelope Rich. He perished in the Netherlands from a gunshot wound in his thigh while fighting in the Eighty Years’ War.
9. Penelope Rich (née Devereux), later Penelope Blount, Countess of Devonshire (1563–1607) was an English noblewoman in the court of Elizabeth and the sister of Robert Devereux. She was the inspiration for Astrophel and Stella, a sonnet sequence written by Philip Sidney. She was unhappily married to Robert Rich (later 1st Earl of Warwick) and when that marriage ended she wed her very public paramour Charles Blount, 1st Earl of Devonshire.
10. Frances Walsingham (1567–1633) was the daughter of Francis Walsingham, Secretary of State for Elizabeth I. She became the wife of Sir Philip Sidney at age sixteen. When he died she married Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, Queen Elizabeth’s favorite. After Devereux was executed for plotting against the Queen, Frances married her longtime lover Richard Burke, 4th Earl of Clanricarde, and went to live in Ireland.
11. Charles Paget (1546–1612) was a Roman Catholic conspirator, involved in the Babington Plot to assassinate Queen Elizabeth.
12. Thomas Morgan (1546–1606) was a spy for Mary, Queen of Scots, also involved in the Babington Plot. He was captured and placed in the Tower of London for three years before his exile to France.
13. Anthony Babington (1561–1586) plotted the assassination of Elizabeth, conspiring with the imprisoned Mary, Queen of Scots. The Babington Plot eventually led to Mary’s execution. Babington’s involvement with the plot was reported to Walsingham, and Babington was taken to the Tower of London. Babington offered Elizabeth £1,000 for his pardon. He was rejected and publicly executed. Parts of his body were strewn all over England as a warning to those who thought they might succeed in a plot against the Queen.
14. Mary Stuart (1542–1587) was Queen of Scotland from 1542 until 1567. In 1586, after particulars of the Babington Plot emerged publicly, Mary was arrested. Walsingham had deliberately arranged for Mary’s letters to be smuggled out of her confinement at Chartley. Mary was misled into thinking her letters were secure, while in reality they were deciphered and read by Walsingham. The letters made it clear that Mary was deeply involved in the attempted assassination of Elizabeth. She was executed in 1587, but it took more than a single blow to remove her head. The first missed her neck and struck her in the back of her head. The second failed to completely cut the neck, leaving her head hanging by small bit of muscle. The frantic executioner cut through that using his axe; thereafter he held Mary’s head high and called out, somewhat ambiguously, “God save the Queen!”
15. Scottish Travelers, sometimes called, in Elizabethan times, Gypsies or tinkers, continue to be a widely diverse and unconnected group of itinerant people, variously calling themselves Gypsies, Travelers in Scotland: Indigenous Highland Travelers, Funfair Travelers, or Showmen, Romanichals (a subset of the Romani people), and Lowland Gypsies. Contemporarily the word Gypsy is out of favor. Interestingly that word is a Middle English declension of the word Egyptians, suggesting the origins of all Traveling People and bringing to mind the so-called Lost Tribes of Israel, though there is absolutely no proof of that connection.
16. The Lady of May is a pastoral one-act play by Sir Philip Sidney. It’s interesting for its allegorical content relating to Queen Elizabeth I, for whom it was first performed. The Queen herself was asked to mediate the outcome of the masque, judging which woodland suitor would win the hand of the country maiden.
17. The odd manuscript referred to in the book is real and was actually in the library of John Dee during his time in Elizabeth’s court. Of
ten called the most mysterious manuscript in the world, it’s comprised of at least two hundred and forty pages and carbon-dated to around 1400. It’s contemporarily known as the Voynich Manuscript, so named for Wilfrid Voynich, a Polish book dealer who purchased it in 1912. It’s an illustrated codex of some sort, handwritten in a completely unknown language. The drawings are as described in the novel. The entire work has been examined by the world’s greatest cryptographers, including the code-breakers of WWII, and, more recently, by computer analysis. At this writing it remains undeciphered, a complete enigma. The original now resides in Yale University’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library (MS 408). It may be examined (and it’s worth a look) online at: beinecke.library.yale.edu/collections/highlights/voynich-manuscript
ALSO BY PHILLIP DEPOY
THE CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE SERIES
A Prisoner in Malta
The English Agent
THE FEVER DEVILIN SERIES
The Devil’s Hearth
The Witch’s Grave
A Minister’s Ghost
A Widow’s Curse
The Drifter’s Wheel
A Corpse’s Nightmare
December’s Thorn
THE FLAP TUCKER SERIES
Easy
Too Easy
Easy as One-Two-Three
Dancing Made Easy
Dead Easy
THE FOGGY MOSCOWITZ SERIES
Cold Florida
Three Shot Burst
The King James Conspiracy
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
PHILLIP DEPOY is a novelist, a playwright, a poet, and a scholar. His work has been widely published and has won numerous awards, including the mystery world’s top honor, the Edgar Award. He lives in Decatur, Georgia. Visit the author’s Web site at www.phillipdepoy.com, or sign up for email updates here.
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Prelude
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Historical Personages and Salient Facts
Also by Phillip DePoy
About the Author
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
THE ENGLISH AGENT. Copyright © 2017 by Phillip DePoy. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
www.minotaurbooks.com
Cover design by David Baldeosingh Rotstein
Cover paintings: Queen Elizabeth I (The Ditchley Portrait) by Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger/Bridgeman Images; still life of skull © Amy Weiss/Trevillion Images; cover photograph of antique book © Brocreative/Shutterstock
The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
ISBN 978-1-250-05843-0 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-4668-6259-3 (e-book)
e-ISBN 9781466862593
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First Edition: February 2017
The English Agent Page 30