Secret World

by M. J. Trow

  ‘That seems very generous, Master Poley,’ Marlowe said. ‘And that seems so unlike you, if I may say on such short acquaintance.’

  ‘It will be worth it, Master Marlowe, make no mistake. There will be more than enough treasure to go round.’

  A gaggle of Winchester geese came down the narrow alley, breasts barely balanced on the top of their bodices, skirts kirtled up, ready for action once the groundlings and gentlemen tumbled out of the play, their vegetables gone. One of them threw her arms around Poley.

  ‘You look like a man who can give a girl a good time,’ she shrieked and all her friends joined in the fun. ‘Let’s see what you’ve got down here, then …’ And she rummaged about in the region of Poley’s codpiece.

  ‘Nah!’ one of the girls screeched. ‘Look at them. Holding hands, they are. They don’t want the likes of us, dearie. They’ve got other things in mind. That’s against God’s law, that is.’

  Poley’s face worked in anger and he let go of Marlowe’s arm. ‘Don’t you speak to me like that, you common slut!’ he said, grabbing the girl painfully by her upper arm. ‘I’ve had more like you than you’ve had …’

  ‘Fools like you,’ she finished for him, breaking away and running with her friends down the alley, breasts bouncing. One girl risked pausing at the end of the lane and, bending over, flung her skirts over her head, showing him her wares.

  Poley watched them go in fury, then turned to see that Marlowe had gone. The theatre was the only place he could have hidden in so quickly and he too slipped inside the small door, where Ned Alleyn was wont to lurk for hours after a performance, waiting for the adoring crowds to appear. He had not been lucky thus far, but he was sure his day would come.

  The narrow corridor was pitch dark and disorienting, even for someone coming in from the gloom of the alley. Poley looked back and forth but Marlowe was nowhere to be seen. From dead ahead there was the noise of Will Shaxsper’s faltering attempt at a play, accompanied by hoots of derision from the groundlings.

  Poley had lost his bearings a little, but could tell from the baying of the audience that the front of the stage was to his right. He turned to his left, therefore, and made his way, inch by careful inch, along the corridor, feeling his way along the wall. Suddenly, the wall disappeared and he was lost in space. He slid his feet forward carefully, one at a time, not sure what he might encounter. Soon, he knew. Marlowe’s left arm came around his neck and squeezed.

  ‘Master Poley,’ he said quietly in his ear. ‘If I can drag you away from the ladies for a moment, I believe we have something to discuss.’

  Poley was a threat shorter than Marlowe and as the poet leaned backwards, his feet left the floor. His throat felt as though it were on fire and he scrabbled helplessly at the thick brocade that protected Marlowe’s forearm. Marlowe shook him, using Poley’s own weight against him and was gratified to hear a rattle coming from the man’s chest. He could feel his dagger pressing into his midriff, so he knew that, for the moment at least, he was unarmed. He could finish it now, with no blood shed, and no one to say who the dead man in Southwark might be. But his basic curiosity was too much and he let the man fall.

  Poley fell at his feet, choking and coughing. He clambered up on to all fours and Marlowe could hear his laboured breathing. Eventually, he could stand and leaned against the wall, panting. ‘Pax,’ he grated. ‘We are on the same side, you and I.’

  ‘Are we?’ Marlowe asked. ‘I doubt it.’

  ‘My offer is good, Marlowe,’ he said. ‘Half each of all the riches of El Dorado. I have the jewel with the first point on it, you the jewel with the last. With the ones we have in between, there is no need to collect the last three. Our five will lead us to it and we can bring back shiploads of gold and jewels, silver … you name it.’

  ‘I don’t believe it can be that simple,’ Marlowe said.

  ‘But I have you interested, Marlowe, don’t I? The riches of the world today won’t compare to what we will have tomorrow.’

  Marlowe did not claim to be an economist; that discipline was not taught at Corpus Christi, but he could immediately see a flaw. He knew it would do no good, because the gold madness had Poley by the short hairs, but he had to tell him, all the same. ‘If there is as much gold there as you say …’

  ‘There is,’ Poley said, ‘there is!’ and he broke off in a paroxysm of coughing.

  ‘Will it not lose its value? If we bring back, shall we say, three times the amount already known …’

  ‘Thirty times three and thirty times again,’ Poley said, getting excited.

  ‘As you say, many times the current known value, then, will gold not become as worthless as sand?’

  Poley was silent. He was a cunning man, but not overly intelligent and big ideas took a while to percolate through his brain. ‘How so?’ But he sounded dubious.

  Marlowe could hardly believe that he was standing here, in a pitch-dark corridor at the Rose, talking economics with a murderer, but needs must when the Devil drives and if he could keep him talking long enough, the play would end and they would be engulfed in actors streaming on to the stage to take their bows. Or collect the vegetables, depending on how the last scene had gone. ‘Gold and silver, and jewels, if it comes to that, are valuable only because they are rare. If there were tons of gold in the world – as we know there are, of course, just not their location – it would no longer be rare and the value would fall accordingly. It would still be worth something, I suppose …’ He stopped and thought for a moment of John Dee, endlessly searching for the Philosophers’ Stone that would make all things gold. ‘Just not much. So, all the death, all the privation that it would take to bring it back to England would all be for nothing.’

  Poley was thinking hard, Marlowe could tell, even in the dark. ‘But …’ Poley had had the dream so long it was dying hard.

  ‘He’s right, you know,’ a voice said from ahead of them up the corridor.

  ‘Who’s there?’ Poley hissed and reached for his dagger.

  A dim light was revealed and a figure walked towards them. He carried a rapier, held out straight in front of him and before anyone could do anything about it, had it pressed to Poley’s throat. With his other hand, he raised his taper and all three men’s faces swam in the wavering light.

  ‘Benedict,’ Poley whispered. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘I might ask the same of you, Shakespeare,’ the man said. ‘And Master … Watson, is it? Or are you Marlowe today?’

  A distant voice from above was heard to ask, ‘Did someone just say Shakespeare?’ It sounded like Philip Henslowe, prowling his theatre, sensing the mood of the crowd growing uglier.

  ‘I am Marlowe today and all days,’ the poet said. ‘But this man isn’t Will Shaxsper, Shakespeare, call him what you wish. His name is Robert Poley. May we assume your name is not Benedict?’

  ‘You may. But I am disappointed in you, Master Poley. I thought we could trust each other more than that.’

  Poley tried to step back, to relieve the pressure of the rapier’s tip against his throat, but the man stepped forward too. Trying not to move his throat too much, Poley said, ‘I used Shakespeare because my name is Poley. Do you see? Pole. Spear. I forgot about this idiot who tries to write plays.’

  ‘Ah, a clever ruse, then. Funny, even.’ But the man wasn’t laughing at all. ‘My name too is a joke, which I think Master Marlowe might understand.’

  Marlowe looked into the man’s eyes, bright in the tiny flame of the taper. ‘I think,’ he said, slowly, ‘I think that you are Harry Bellot, pilot of the Benedict.’

  Bellot’s eyes widened and he smiled. ‘Right on the money, Master Marlowe, and I mean that quite literally, as I am sure you agree. If you had been visiting the theatre with your usual regularity, you would have met me already. I am old Dick the Painter, always around the place, doing odd jobs. Ah, I see you thinking. If he is about to find the gold of El Dorado, why is he working at the Rose, at everyone’s beck and call? And th
e answer is simple, Master Marlowe. When that popinjay Drake brought us all home, he gave us nothing. Some of us got some back pay but other than that, nothing. He got the Queen’s rapier on his shoulder when he should have had mine through his filthy, thieving guts. And so I got myself a job. I didn’t need much, just enough to put a roof over my head and be able to visit my old mother back in my home town now and again.’

  ‘That would be Lowestoft, presumably?’ Marlowe said.

  ‘You know a lot, Marlowe,’ Poley snarled but was brought up short with a prod of the rapier.

  ‘We met,’ Bellot said, ‘though briefly.’ And he quoted himself with his broad Suffolk vowels. ‘They’re a funny lot round here.’

  ‘So,’ Marlowe went on, half to himself. ‘You heard of the globes, sent out by Francis Drake and you even saw the one that Leonard Morton had.’

  ‘I did. I was an old friend of Master Morton’s, back when we were young. A man in his time plays many parts, Master Marlowe. I have been a soldier, a sailor. I even survived the siege of Malta, for my sins.’

  ‘You and Jack Barnet,’ Marlowe remembered.

  ‘But he didn’t survive me,’ Poley said with a grin. ‘I left him with a slit throat.’

  He winced as Bellot’s blade tip slid sideways, drawing fresh blood and tearing Poley’s collar. ‘Barnet was a friend of mine, you bastard,’ he hissed. ‘But Morton was so innocent –’ Bellot was choosing his moment to put Poley out of everyone’s misery – ‘he would show the globe to anyone he thought a friend. I couldn’t work out what Drake was up to at first. He is known as a man who doesn’t spend a penny that isn’t to his own advantage. And then, I worked it out. The opal in Morton’s globe was part of a treasure map. I started doing a little investigation, as far as I could while trying to earn a living. I found out where some of the other globes were – it cost me an angel or two, posing as a customer of the silversmith, for example, and getting friendly with his idiot boy, but in the end I had enough names to begin with. I had heard rumours, of course.’

  ‘From the sailors on the trip home?’ Marlowe checked. Poley was moving his eyes only, back and forth, finding out what the men knew. He had got out of tighter places than this. Even from this inauspicious position, all may be well.

  ‘That’s quite right, Master Marlowe,’ Bellot said with a nod, like a schoolmaster praising a bright child. ‘Some knew where the gold was found …’

  Poley risked his life to lean forward. ‘Along the Amazon’s mouth,’ he said. ‘Everyone knows that.’

  ‘But you see, Master Poley, as I suppose I must call you, that is not where the gold is now. The gold was loaded on to ships and moved to other locations. They are spread around the globe and the clue to those locations is in its turn hidden … elsewhere. This is what these globes will tell us.’

  Poley’s face fell. ‘You lied to me!’ he said.

  ‘Of course I did, you little weasel,’ Bellot said, easing the rapier a little. ‘You would sell your own mother for an angel and a cup of wine. What price any secret you were told? Don’t bother with an answer, I’ll tell you. The price would be that of the highest bidder, that’s what. And so I let you believe what you wanted to believe. As I remember it, I didn’t tell you that the globes would lead to Drake’s gold. I mentioned Drake. I mentioned gold. Your grubbing, grasping little mind did the rest.’

  Poley was speechless. He didn’t regret the deaths; men and women were ten a penny to one such as Robin Poley. It was the work he regretted. All that work and for a few paltry bags of coins. ‘Why?’ was all he could muster. ‘Why?’

  ‘Ah,’ Bellot said, smiling. ‘Why? That is the question. Perhaps the question, eh, Master Marlowe? Drake took the gold as any man might, for the greed of it. But then, as he journeyed, he realized what Master Marlowe here realized in a heartbeat. He might just as well take sand, or water, or God’s fresh air back to England, for all the value it would have. He would have flooded the market and all that effort would be for nothing. And you know what that’s like, don’t you, Master Poley?’ He pressed a fraction closer with the rapier so that Poley felt warm blood trickle down to soak into the linen at his neck.

  Marlowe took up the tale. ‘So, he hid the gold, and put the clues in the globes, where they would be safe. Because no one knew that others had the rest of the puzzle, he knew the treasures could not be found.’

  ‘Quite so, Master Marlowe,’ Bellot praised his star pupil again. ‘But Drake, he always makes sure there is a plan beneath the plan, the skull beneath the skin, so to speak. He put the final clues in something he called the Money Pit and no one knows its exact location. But even if men find it and guess its purpose, they will find nothing there. Because the Money Pit contains no money. Just the way to find it, but elsewhere. Oh, he’s a cunning one, is Drake. But I have beat him at his game.’

  ‘Not really,’ Marlowe said. ‘We have two globes, you have three. But the other three are safe and beside which, Drake knows where the others are.’

  ‘And there are plans,’ Poley croaked. ‘You told me Joshua the silversmith had plans.’

  ‘Yes,’ Bellot said. ‘And you, incompetent fool, couldn’t find them.’

  Marlowe looked with added venom at Poley. ‘So it was you who wrecked Joshua’s workshop?’

  ‘Yes.’ Poley looked proud. ‘I made sure he would make no more jewels, taking the work out of good Christian hands.’

  Bellot looked at him aghast. ‘You really are a weasel, Poley,’ he said. ‘I looked for the man for the job and sadly, I found you.’ He turned to Marlowe. ‘I understand that Joshua has caused you and your friend Watson a little trouble, Master Marlowe?’

  Marlowe inclined his head. ‘A little.’ Everything was falling into place.

  ‘I’m sorry for that. I began this enterprise to beat Drake at his own game. I would have had little pleasure from it. I will probably be dead and gone by the time he discovered that his plan was in ruins. But, if bones can hear or if souls in Heaven can see what happens here on earth, then my bones, my soul would sing to see him brought low.’

  ‘What would you have done with the globes?’ Marlowe asked.

  Bellot’s eyes were shining and Marlowe knew what was in his heart. It was just a shame for the dead that he had chosen Poley as his agent. It would have made no difference even had he shared his purpose. As soon as Poley and his ilk heard the word ‘gold’, all sense flew out of the window. ‘I would have destroyed them, Master Marlowe. I would have taken them to the silversmith and asked him to melt them, beat them, whatever it might take to have them not exist any more.’

  Marlowe nodded. It would take a strong man to do it, but if there was such a man present, then Bellot was that man.

  Just then, a trumpet blast made them all jump and the corridor was full of rushing bodies. It says much for the magic of the stage, the smell of the crowd, that no one noticed that one of the men they brushed past so incontinently was Christopher Marlowe, a man so sought after by Philip Henslowe that just speaking to him could earn a man a groat. They didn’t notice that old Dick the Painter was standing with a rather weasly-looking man on the end of a rapier. It was time for the final Act of Henry VI and it was all hands on deck. There were vegetables to deflect and possible acting glory to win. As soon as they had appeared, they had disappeared and with them Robert Poley.

  Marlowe knew the theatre like the back of his hand and there was only one place Poley could have gone, if not on to the stage and that was up into the flies. Marlowe dashed behind Tom Sledd’s flats, almost knocking the royal palace on to the stage. Climbing the ladder was difficult with only one good arm, but he was determined that Poley shouldn’t get away. He had slit the throat of Jack Barnet, who had only been trying to protect his master’s belongings. He had smashed the skull and crushed the brains of poor, mad Jane Benchkyne. And there was vengeance in Kit Marlowe’s heart.

  He saw Poley hurrying ahead, balancing on the boards that gave Dick the Painter his platform when working at heig
hts. Marlowe went for the man as the actors assembled on stage and another fanfare announced the arrival of Henry the Sixth, better known as the incomparable Ned Alleyn. The crowd’s applause was less than ecstatic. They had seen Alleyn’s Henry already and weren’t exactly impressed. What they were after was a good solid death scene and apart from an off-stage burning there had been nothing yet. Some smoke wafted on from stage right and some falsetto screaming just didn’t get the job done, theatrically speaking.

  Poley glanced back. Marlowe was too close for comfort, a dagger at his back and there was no other way down. He took his life in his hands and lunged at the thick rope that hung there. He screamed as the rough hemp lacerated his hands, but he was on the ground, Marlowe after him, catching the wildly swinging rope and leaning into it so that he could ease the pain in his arm. The thud of them landing on the boards was followed by the hiss of steel as both men whipped free their daggers, facing each other.

  SIXTEEN

  The Earl of Suffolk was well into his stride by now. Jack Roland was used to nothing parts in nothing plays but he couldn’t remember one as dull as this. It came to something when the Fiends that the Devil had sent to suckle the paps of La Pucelle, nonentities who had no lines at all, got a bigger clap than he did. But this was it. His big moment in Act V, Scene V and he was determined to milk it for all it was worth.

  ‘A dower, my lords,’ he shouted to everyone on stage. ‘Disgrace not so your king …’

  The groundlings all looked at Alleyn, the king of the same name, but he hadn’t moved. For days now, he, Henslowe, Sledd and all of them had been trying to find a way to end this rubbish with a bang, but so far it had eluded them. So he just stood there while Jack Roland arranged his wedding for him.

  ‘That he should be so abject, base and poor,’ the man droned on, ignoring the fact that none of those words described Ned Alleyn at all. Oh, what a fall was this from Tamburlaine! ‘To choose for wealth and not for perfect love. Henry is able to enrich his queen, And not to seek a queen to make him rich …’