by M. J. Trow
‘Forgive me, my lord,’ Marlowe said, reaching for his cloak from the back of his chair. ‘As Sir Francis says, I was just going.’
‘No, no,’ Mildmay said as he stayed his arm. ‘No, my dear fellow, I may have need of you.’
‘You need a playwright, Sir Walter?’ Marlowe asked, with a raised eyebrow.
‘Playwright be damned.’ Mildmay attacked his second goblet of Rhenish. ‘They tell me you’re good with that.’ He pointed to the rapier at Marlowe’s hip. ‘I have reason to believe my life may be in danger. I had come to ask my brother-in-law here for help and he may, unwittingly, have provided that already.’
‘Oh, yes.’ Walsingham suddenly remembered their family link. ‘How are my nephews and nieces?’
‘Very well … well, you know, apart from the usual trouble children bring.’
Both men’s eyes rolled Heavenwards.
Mildmay spun to the door, checked the passageway for loitering spies – although, of all the places in the Queen’s England, Whitehall had more than anywhere else – closed the door and locked it.
‘Marlowe,’ he said as he sat down next to the man, ‘can you keep a secret?’
FIVE
The Chancellor of the Exchequer’s first account was so brusque and, at the same time, rambling that neither Walsingham nor Marlowe understood it. Mildmay was on his fourth goblet of Rhenish before any clarity emerged.
‘The rest of the house was untouched,’ the Chancellor said, trying to answer his companions’ questions. ‘I was away for the day hunting and the day became night – you know how these things drag on, Francis?’ Walsingham did.
‘My steward, Fenchurch, was there to greet me on my return. He was distraught. Kept babbling. I had to slap him to calm him down.’
‘What had happened?’ Marlowe could do without endless tales of the berating of servants.
‘My strongroom had been … well, plundered isn’t too strong a word. You know the house, Francis …’
‘Yes, of course, but Marlowe doesn’t,’ Walsingham said. ‘Tell him.’
‘Pretty place, near Verulamium, the old Roman city.’
Marlowe knew.
‘Conventional building. Like a letter “E”. My strongroom is in the West Wing. If you have parchment and ink?’
Walsingham did and the Chancellor sketched a quick plan. To be honest, Marlowe could make neither head nor tail of it. ‘Here’s the duck pond,’ Mildmay said, sensing the man’s bewilderment. ‘Stables.’ He stabbed with a stubby finger on the drawing. ‘This bit here –’ he looked at it again with his head on one side – ‘there or thereabouts at any rate, is Christina’s parlour where she and her ladies sit endlessly stitching and bitching about ladies of the county who are not present. Jakes. Kennels. Here –’ he tapped again on the vellum – ‘is the strongroom. It’s double locked and there’s only one door.’
‘Windows?’ Marlowe asked.
‘Again, only one. That had not been touched.’
‘So the intruder got in by the door?’ Walsingham checked.
‘Must have,’ Mildmay replied with a shrug. ‘Damnedest piece of lock-picking I’ve ever seen.’
‘You’re sure it was picked?’ Marlowe asked.
‘Ah,’ Mildmay said. ‘I know what you’re thinking. An inside job, as it were.’
‘Who has keys to that door?’ Walsingham wanted to know.
‘Only Fenchurch and me,’ Mildmay said. ‘And that was my first thought too. Fenchurch has itchy fingers. But the man’s been with me now these twenty years. Anyway, just to be sure I thrashed him within an inch of his life. He didn’t crack. And I know Fenchurch. Not made of the sternest stuff, to be honest. If there was any cracking to do, he’d do it.’
‘The room itself …’ Marlowe brought the Chancellor back to the point.
‘Contains two … no, three … chests. One contains the Mildmay papers – deeds, covenants, inspeximi, that sort of thing.’
‘And the others?’ Marlowe asked.
Mildmay hesitated, his narrow eyes flitting between the faces of his listeners. ‘Well …’ he began.
‘You insisted that Marlowe stay, Walter,’ Walsingham said. ‘No time for cold feet now, I fancy.’
‘The others contain coin, gold and silver. Oh, nothing excessive. Just my personal fortune and the usual expenses involved with running a great office of state. You know, Francis …’
Walsingham knew and he sighed. He sighed because, of all Her Majesty’s Privy Councillors, he alone had grown poor in her service. The others lined their pockets so heavily it was a wonder they could walk.
‘How much was taken?’ Marlowe asked.
Mildmay turned pale. This upstart had the impudence to enquire into his finances. His. The Chancellor of the Exchequer. He composed himself. ‘The Great Seal was broken,’ he said. ‘Shattered as an act of pure vandalism.’
‘I assume these chests were also locked, Walter?’ Walsingham checked.
‘Of course. Double, like the door. Again, no smashing of the mechanism. Just the lids left open.’
‘How much was taken?’ Marlowe asked again.
The silence hung heavy in that candlelit room in the heart of London, the river sliding silver under the fitful moon. ‘Only a gewgaw,’ Mildmay said.
‘A gewgaw?’ Walsingham repeated. ‘What sort of gewgaw?’
‘Er … may I draw it?’
He’d made a dog’s breakfast of the plan of his house. Walsingham was happy to watch him do likewise with his stolen artefact. The pen slashed this way and that and then, peering closely, Mildmay placed a series of dots across the vellum. ‘There,’ he said, leaning back and quietly pleased with the results of his penmanship, ‘something like that.’
‘Something like that?’ Marlowe said.
‘No.’ Mildmay took umbrage. ‘Exactly like that, come to think of it.’
Walsingham tilted the paper this way and that and finally Mildmay took it from him and turned it firmly the right way up. ‘What is it?’ Walsingham had to ask.
‘Well, it’s the world, of course.’ Mildmay was a little hurt. ‘Or at least, a map of it.’
‘Er … I see.’ Walsingham was lying. ‘What’s this bit?’
‘Where?’
‘This blob here. Some uncharted territory? Terra Incognita?’
‘It’s a diamond, Francis,’ Mildmay explained. The people they were appointing as Spymasters these days!
‘What is it made of, Sir Walter?’ Marlowe asked.
‘Silver,’ the Chancellor told him.
‘And its worth?’
‘Damn you, sir!’ Mildmay roared. As if this whole business were not disturbing enough, he was obliged to endure the financial probings of a man he knew to be a cobbler’s son. It was intolerable.
‘I merely ask,’ Marlowe said softly, ‘because it’s odd that the charmer should have overlooked your other valuables and merely taken this.’
‘Charmer, Marlowe?’ Mildmay bridled. ‘A curiously polite term for a blackguard of the deepest hue.’
‘Forgive me, Sir Walter,’ Marlowe said with a smile. ‘In the theatrical world I inhabit, a charmer is a man who picks locks. Yours seems to be something of an expert.’
‘Marlowe’s point is well made, Walter,’ Walsingham said. ‘A bit of silver, a small stone. It’s upsetting, of course, a man of your sensibilities … It must seem that your world is turned upside down.’
‘It will be if Drake finds out,’ Mildmay muttered.
‘Drake?’ Walsingham blinked. ‘I don’t follow.’
Mildmay checked the room again to make sure that Walsingham’s rats didn’t work for the hero of the Armada. ‘Drake gave me this,’ the Chancellor said in a half whisper. ‘He said it was precious. More precious, he said, than all the perfumes of Arabia.’
Marlowe smiled. ‘I hadn’t put Drake down for a poet.’
‘Do you know him?’
‘I know of him,’ the playwright said.
‘Yes,’ Mildmay
said. ‘And if you’re wise, you’ll keep the distance that that implies. The man is a stone cold killer.’
‘Oh, come now, Walter,’ Walsingham said with a chuckle. ‘Drake can be difficult, I know …’
‘Difficult? He threatened to fight Frobisher in his shirt. I personally saw him hang sailors at Plymouth. And he murdered poor old Doughty on a whim.’
‘That was a case of mutiny, Walter,’ Walsingham reminded him. ‘Drake was within his rights. Doughty challenged his leadership during the circumnavigation.’
‘Yes, well, we only have Drake’s word on that, don’t we? And as to what he does to Spaniards …’
‘That is what we pay him for, Walter,’ Walsingham reminded him.
‘Where is he now?’ the Chancellor wanted to know.
‘Somewhere off Dungeness, I heard,’ Walsingham said. ‘Although once a captain is at sea, even my intelligencers can’t track him.’
‘Precisely,’ Mildmay said. ‘For all you know, he could be at St Albans as we speak. Outside that very door, even.’ And the Chancellor of the Exchequer grew paler still.
‘Look. Walter.’ Walsingham laid a reassuring hand on the man’s shoulder. ‘Why don’t you rest here for a while? It’s a long ride from Hertfordshire and you’re clearly overwrought. I’ll have a bath drawn for you …’
‘Don’t be ludicrous, Francis. The Queen may have one of those a year, but I don’t intend to. There are standards, you know. Besides, I have a bed in my own apartments along the river. I can lock myself in there and hope for the best.’
He stood up, straightening his gown and adjusting his ruff. ‘Marlowe. You will attend on me tomorrow. Nine of the clock sharp.’
‘Very good, Sir Walter.’ Marlowe stood up with him.
‘I’ll bid you good night, then.’ And he bowed curtly before leaving, checking that the passageway was clear before he did so.
‘You’ll keep all this under your hat, of course,’ Walsingham said. ‘Don’t worry. I wouldn’t inflict Walter on you. I’ll find a sworder from somewhere to watch his back.’
‘Is he right?’ Marlowe asked. ‘About Drake, I mean.’
‘Well …’ The Spymaster thought for a moment. ‘He does have a certain look about him. Something in the eyes. Actually, I was less than honest a moment ago. Drake is not off Dungeness – at least, he’d better not be – as he’s leading an expedition against Lisbon; well, the Portuguese have had it coming for some time. He’s going to put Don Antonio on the throne. Yes, I know the man has less right to it than you do, but what’s a little genealogical fudging in foreign affairs. But no, my dear brother-in-law, as you may have gathered, is rather excitable. Lets things get out of proportion. Goes with trying to balance the nation’s books, I suppose.’
‘And he doesn’t know what Drake is really up to?’
‘Nobody knows what Drake is really up to,’ Walsingham said with a scowl. ‘But no, Walter is not privy to such information, Privy Councillor or no Privy Councillor.’
Marlowe smiled. He knew more than the Chancellor of the Exchequer did. He’d always known that that was likely to be true, Sir Walter Mildmay not being noted for his brain, but it was nice to have it confirmed. ‘Still,’ he said. ‘It is a coincidence, isn’t it?’
‘What is?’
The poet-projectioner slid his hand into his purse and produced the silver disc that had been Alice Snow’s and Jane Benchkyne’s. ‘How similar Sir Walter’s awful drawing is to this?’
Walsingham’s jaw dropped a little and he took the thing in his hand. It was heavy and gleamed in the candlelight, a diamond sparkling from its centre. He looked at Mildmay’s sketch, then at the globe. ‘Where did you get this?’ he asked Marlowe. ‘Not, please God, from Francis Drake.’
‘From an angel in a well,’ the poet said with a smile. He caught Walsingham’s look. ‘It’s a long story,’ he added and accepted another goblet of the Spymaster’s excellent Rhenish.
‘But I’m still not sure how Jane Benchkyne came by this trifle.’ Walsingham had abandoned going to bed tonight. The air was sultry anyway and he found it hard to sleep these nights.
‘No more am I,’ Marlowe said, ‘but it must have meant a lot to her. That much was clear from her will – “All the world” that she bequeathed to her maidservant. And that brings me to another problem, Sir Francis. Alice Snow is languishing in the condemned cell in Canterbury’s West Gate – and neither my father nor Sir Roger Manwood is a particularly gentle gaoler.’
‘What do you suggest?’
‘The girl is as pure as her surname,’ Marlowe told him. ‘Perhaps a word from you?’
Walsingham smiled. If there was one thing he enjoyed, it was kicking the arse of overmighty magistrates. ‘Won’t that make things awkward, between you and your father, I mean?’
‘Nothing could make that more awkward,’ Marlowe assured him bitterly.
‘Very well, then,’ he said. ‘Consider it done. But in exchange …’ Walsingham was still looking at the silver globe. ‘You say this is identical to the one stolen from my brother-in-law?’
‘Not exactly, no.’ Marlowe looked at the sketch again. ‘But, with all due respect to Sir Walter’s artistry, which we must accept is negligible, it is very difficult to tell. The diamond is in a different place.’
Walsingham strained his eyes in the candlelight. ‘So it is,’ he said.
‘“In exchange”?’ Marlowe was waiting for the other boot to drop.
‘You see this.’ He pointed with a quill to a point on the silver map. ‘What does it say?’
‘It looks like MM.’ Marlowe squinted at it, turning it this way and that in the light. ‘Two thousand?’
‘No.’ Walsingham shook his head. ‘You are trying to be too clever by half. MM is the man who made this map. Michael Mercator, if I don’t miss my guess. You’ll find him near the sign of the Fleece in Paternoster Row.’
‘And what’s this?’ It was Marlowe’s turn to ask the questions.
‘Looks like a “J”,’ Walsingham muttered. ‘Inside a star.’
‘And what does that mean?’ Marlowe asked.
‘When you find Michael Mercator you can ask him.’
It was always easy to find Tom Sledd. A man with ears and a nose all in working order would soon track him down inside the Rose by listening for the sound of sawing – or cursing – or sniffing out the pungent scent of glue which carried more than a slight whiff of the cow’s foot from which it was made. Outside the Rose, he could blend with all other men, but in here, in his element, he was the theatre. The important bit, the bit that kept the audiences coming back time and again. Playwrights may come, playwrights may go, but Tom Sledd was happy in the knowledge that stage managers would go on for ever. On this particular day, he was standing on the stage, trying to look up into the flies without getting a faceful of paint.
He flinched slightly as he heard voices approaching from stage right.
‘Where in Hell is he …? Oh, Tom, there you are. Have you seen that idiot Shaxsper anywhere today?’
Philip Henslowe would probably also have been able to blend with all other men, had his face not carried a purple hue in all weathers and moods. The man always looked as if he might explode and now was no exception. Taking his customary step backwards, just in case today was the day the explosion would finally happen, the stage manager shook his head.
‘Someone must know where he is. He’s supposed to be rewriting that final scene. It just doesn’t work. Henry the Bloody Sixth! What was I thinking, letting him have his head in the first place?’ He was remembering every ghastly, reckless moment and repeated Shaxsper’s pleading, Warwickshire accent and all. ‘“I think I’m ready, Master Henslowe.” Master Henslowe; what a crawler! “Marlowe’s all very well, but I have a few ideas of my own.” Why, oh why, did I say yes?’ He looked up, shielding his eyes against the light. ‘You! You, up there! Have you seen Shaxsper at all?’
The muffled answer was not very helpful but the gist appeared to be
that the man with the paint pot wouldn’t know Shaxsper if he bit him on the leg.
‘You must know him,’ Henslowe said, exasperation oozing from every pore. ‘About so high …’ And he sketched a wide arc that meant the playwright from Stratford could be a dwarf or a giant. ‘Big head …’
Tom Sledd shuffled his feet. ‘He may be a bit pleased with himself …’ he muttered, ‘but that’s a bit unnecessary, Master Henslowe.’
Henslowe spun to face his stage manager. ‘What?’ he barked. Then, he realized the misunderstanding. ‘No, no, I mean, he actually has a big head.’ Again, he sketched the feature in the air and there was no arguing with that. Shaxsper really did have an unusually big head, especially now he was parting company with his hair.
There was a louder answer from above, accompanied by a large gob of white paint which missed Henslowe by the merest whisker.
‘Sorry!’
‘Do that again,’ Henslowe yelled, ‘and you’ll be looking for other employment. Now, have you seen Shaxsper or not?’
He strained upwards to try and hear the answer but with no success.
‘Come down, you cokes!’ he yelled. ‘And mind that paint.’
Above the two men, the ladder creaked and, with much panting and muttering, with joints whose clicking almost drowned out the ladder’s complaints, the scene painter came down to stage level.
Tom Sledd could only sigh. There were never enough hours in the day at the best of times, without Henslowe ordering his men around to further order. The job at hand wasn’t to do with scenery per se, he would admit, but the ceiling certainly needed a coat of paint. In the last scenes the previous night, so much whitewash had fallen on the players they looked as though they had been caught in a snowstorm. Bad enough when the snow actually did come in, but this was the hottest week of the year so far, so a coat of paint was overdue.
‘Now, then,’ Henslowe snapped. ‘Have you seen Shaxsper?’
‘About so high.’ The painter waved an arm and sent a random spray of paint across Sledd’s chest from his paintbrush. ‘Sorry, Master Sledd. Big head.’ He held his brushless hand above his own head to show the extent of Shaxsper’s undoubtedly stupendous brow.