Eleventh Hour

by M. J. Trow

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ Skeres grovelled. ‘Er … what should we do now?’

  Cecil stood up. ‘You are walking gentlemen, aren’t you, at the Rose?’

  ‘We are, sir,’ Frizer said.

  ‘One of us,’ Skeres glowered, ‘has a speaking part.’

  ‘Continue to walk, then,’ Cecil smiled. ‘But far enough behind Marlowe that he is not aware of you. But, as for speaking, don’t. Not to him, anyway.’

  FOURTEEN

  Midday. Spring was being kind and there was real warmth in the sun that said that summer was not far behind. Marlowe sat in the window seat at his house in Hog Lane, looking out on to the tiny patch of trimmed box that he presumed to call a garden. Agnes had spread some linen out to dry on the hedges and the smell of lavender and lye crept in through the casement, which was open just the merest crack. A bird was singing its heart out in a tree on the edge of the garden and Marlowe closed his eyes to listen to it more closely. He had been brought up to the sound of birdsong, but he was ashamed to say that he had no idea which bird it was that was pouring liquid gold from its throat into the warm air. He leaned his head back on the transom and let his mind drift. He tried to remember the last time he had been here, at peace, in his own house, with nothing but silence and birdsong to surround him. The sounds of the road outside swam in and out of his consciousness until they had gone altogether. Then the bird. Then … he slept.

  ‘Kit! Kit! Wake up!’

  He woke with a jerk that told him he had not been asleep for long. His head bumped on the window, his foot had gone to sleep and there was a face he knew inches from his, hissing at him. He focused on the large, worried eyes, the mole like a third eye on the forehead.

  ‘Lord Strange,’ he blurred through dry lips. ‘How can I help you?’

  ‘Kit, where have you been? I’ve been here twice already trying to find you.’

  ‘Oh, around. About. The Tower. The Rose. All the usual places, thorough brush, thorough briar.’ He suddenly realized the import of Strange’s presence in his room. ‘Have you news for me? The poison?’

  ‘Yes!’ Lord Stanley was triumphant and waved a small wad of parchment in the air in front of Marlowe’s eyes. ‘Here it is, by fast horse from Derby.’

  Marlowe reached for it, but the other man snatched it away.

  ‘Not so fast, Master Marlowe. I need to explain first. My man – who, as I have told you, I entrust with all my food testing – is by name one Silas Beaucheek. He is a chemist of some local repute, but you will not have heard of him here in London, I am sure. He had little to go on, so has had to cut some corners. As a general rule, if he finds a noxious substance, he makes sure of his diagnosis by feeding it to mice, rats and so on.’

  Marlowe thought of Salazar and shivered.

  ‘But with so little, he has come to his conclusion by chemical means only. So,’ he stepped back as Marlowe made another lunge for the paper, ‘you must bear that in mind. This is almost certainly correct, but Silas refuses to say it is definitely so. He says I am not to tell you unless you agree with that proviso. He brought the news himself, although he is not accustomed to riding so far and so fast. It has made him a little testy, but his reports are always accurate, I stake my life on it.’

  ‘Give me the paper,’ Marlowe said, through clenched teeth.

  ‘Do you agree?’ Strange insisted.

  ‘Yes, yes, I agree.’ Marlowe looked very young, with sleep still filling his eyes and anticipation transfiguring his face. ‘So, give me the paper.’

  With a smile, Strange handed it over and watched as Marlowe unwrapped it.

  ‘Latin. Impressive. Let me see … hmm …’ Marlowe looked up and met Strange’s eyes, watching him for his reaction. ‘More than one agent?’

  The man nodded. ‘Cunning devil, don’t you think?’

  ‘Cunning. Evil. It doesn’t really matter which. One of these I recognize of course. The other … wait a minute and it will come to me.’

  Ferdinando Strange was hopping up and down with the stress of it all. He shook Marlowe by the arm. ‘Come man, surely. It is obvious.’ He pursed his lips and mimed with Marlowe the syllables of the Latin name. ‘Still nothing? Kit, you disappoint me.’

  ‘Solanum. Solanum. That’s deadly nightshade, isn’t it?’

  ‘Oh, so close!’ Strange had now clasped his hands under his chin and the knuckles were showing white with the effort of not blurting out the answer. ‘It is the same family, though you wouldn’t think that at first. It has to come into flower to see the similarity.’

  ‘Into flower. So, it doesn’t usually flower?’ Marlowe could feel the answer tantalizing him at the tip of his tongue. ‘So … not a garden plant. Is it …’ the light dawned in his eye. ‘Can that be right? Potato?’

  Strange clapped his hands. ‘Yes! Potato.’ He suddenly looked very solemn. ‘I said to Silas, were they safe to eat? I do sometimes have them on my table though, truth to tell, I don’t find them very tasty. He told me that treated properly, they were harmless, but if allowed to become green, to mature if you will, they can be deadly. And, of course, like their cousin belladonna, the berries are poisonous, although in the normal way of cultivation, the plant is destroyed long before that stage, to get at the tubers.’

  ‘And the poison is easy to extract?’

  ‘It doesn’t need extraction in the accepted sense, although Silas says that the dregs contained a concentrate. The other agent, the nicotine, is simply won, of course, from the dottle of a pipe. All it would need for the poisoner to extract it would be for him to drink smoke for a day or so and then empty the tar from the pipe. A good pipeful could kill a roomful of lusty men in minutes.’

  ‘But Sir Francis lingered,’ Marlowe pointed out.

  ‘Indeed. I asked Silas about that and he said he couldn’t be sure, of course, that these were the only two poisons used. It could be that many were employed, in minute doses such as we have here, all having a cumulative effect. In a man old and tired like Sir Francis, eventually they would take their lethal toll.’

  ‘Isn’t that all a little … inexact, though?’ Marlowe pondered. ‘Poisoners usually look for the quick result. Especially if it is to stop someone’s mouth.’

  ‘True.’ Strange was an expert on the ways of the poisoner, since he saw one lurking behind every tree, behind every arras. ‘But there are other reasons for poisoning someone. Hatred. Wickedness.’

  ‘True.’ Marlowe sighed. ‘Thank Master Beaucheek for me. It has both answered a question and posed many more.’ He smiled as he heard Agnes come back from marketing, slamming the door behind her and humming as she came. ‘Would you like to share a platter with me? Freshly marketed.’

  Strange looked askance. ‘Potato?’

  ‘By no means.’

  ‘Do you drink smoke?’

  ‘Rarely.’

  Strange smiled. ‘Then I should be delighted!’

  A small fire crackled in the centre of the half-circle created by the tall-backed chairs. There were seven of them, their backs upright and carved with the rampant lions of John Dee’s family. The magus had been dreading this for days, ever since Marlowe had first suggested it. He had every faith in the Muses’ darling, Machiavel, who moved in ways as mysterious as his own, but this … all the men who were about to fill these chairs were his friends; more, they were the finest, most inquisitive minds in Europe, perhaps the world. No good could come of an evening like this, but the Queen’s magus knew in his heart of hearts that he had caused it. It might be Marlowe’s finger that would point accusingly in the next hour, but it was Dee’s suggestion that had prompted it.

  Hariot arrived first, his bright eyes glittering in the broad face, his hair thin and lank under the scholar’s cap. He carried a satchel with him that Dee knew was full of scribbled numbers, written forward and back in a mad symmetry that only he understood. Percy was next, dusty from the Sussex roads around Petworth. There was a love poem beating out a refrain in his head and the face of a girl he h
ad just met floated tantalizingly in his vision. He loved her voice, though he had heard it but fleetingly and it drowned out the inane babblings of Hariot and the hostly mumblings of John Dee. Ferdinando Stanley had been at his town house when the doctor’s letter had arrived; these meetings were becoming very regular, but Strange knew that Dee never called them lightly. There was always method in his madness. Ralegh swept in in his glittering finery, jewels at his throat and in his earlobes. He had left his sword at Durham House but the dagger was never far away, should his honour be slighted. ‘Urgent’, the doctor’s message had said: that was good enough for him.

  ‘I don’t wish to be rude, John,’ Hariot said as they all took their places, ‘but why are we here?’

  Dee glanced out of the window. Night had well and truly fallen and his own reflection wobbled back at him through the latticed panes. ‘Well …’

  There was a crash and the door flew open, Barnaby Salazar scurrying through it. ‘Sorry I’m late, dears.’

  Ralegh muttered to Strange, ‘I do wish he wouldn’t call us that. It’s so …’

  ‘Overseas?’ suggested Strange.

  ‘Bit of a disaster on the domestic front.’ Salazar was hauling off his cap and cloak, throwing them to one of Dee’s minions. ‘Old Jorge died tonight.’

  ‘Who?’ Ralegh thought he had to ask.

  ‘Jorge, my steward,’ Salazar took the hot toddy another minion offered him and quaffed it back. ‘Ah, nectar. Thank you, John. Just what the doctor ordered, eh? I must admit, it came as something of a shock. Oh, he wasn’t in the first flush, I’ll grant you that, but when a man you have known almost all your life just dwindles and is dead in days, it hits hard. Mistress Jorge is distraught, of course.’

  ‘Mistress Jorge?’ Strange frowned. ‘Doesn’t she have a name?’

  ‘Oh, I expect so.’ Salazar caught Strange’s disapproving look. ‘Oh, come on, now, Ferdinando. You and I are too busy peering into the secrets of the universe to keep track of our servants’ names. So, John,’ he took a vacant chair, ‘what’s the order of business?’

  Dee cleared his throat and looked around them all. The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end as he remembered that one of them might be a murderer. ‘The order of business, gentlemen,’ he said, in the rich, powerful voice that often silenced the Queen’s court: ‘Allow me to introduce …’ and he clapped his hands. Another door opened and two men strode into the room – Kit Marlowe and his man, Carter.

  ‘What’s the meaning of this?’ Ralegh asked first, but it was a question on everyone’s lips.

  Dee sighed and crept towards a chair. ‘I’ll let Master Marlowe explain.’

  Marlowe’s genius had filled stages before and his words daily held hundreds in their power. But he had rarely been at the centre of the wooden O himself. Not that this was a baldactum play. This would be a performance like no other. ‘Thank you, lords and gentlemen, for coming tonight and at such short notice. I’ll not detain you long. Your Grace,’ he turned to Percy, ‘how do you know me?’

  Percy frowned. ‘You are the Muses’ darling,’ he said. ‘The most famous playwright and poet in England.’

  ‘But, specifically,’ Marlowe said. ‘How did we meet?’

  ‘Er … you came as a friend of my librarian, Michael Johns, as I understood it to see my books.’

  ‘Sir Walter?’ Marlowe turned to him.

  ‘You wanted to talk poetry. As you know, I dabble.’ That was it. Clearly, Ralegh had no intention of mentioning a duel fought over the honour of Bess Throckmorton.

  ‘Master Hariot?’

  ‘Um … you were looking for a character for a new play, a philosopher. I was flattered, of course …’

  ‘Master Salazar?’

  ‘Damned if I know,’ the man shrugged. ‘Unless it was to sample my country’s culinary delights.’

  ‘What of me, Kit?’ Strange asked. ‘After all, I was just a guest of Hariot’s. Why am I here tonight?’

  ‘Patience, my lord,’ Marlowe said. ‘Hell is empty and all the devils are here. Gentlemen,’ he turned to face them all, ‘I have been less than truthful. The Earl of Northumberland was kind enough to call me the most famous playwright in England, but tonight I wear another hat.’

  The only sound in the room was the occasional crack of a log or a crumble of shifting ash.

  ‘I am what is commonly called a projectioner and I work for Francis Walsingham.’

  Only the fire responded while they all looked at each other. Only Dee was unsurprised.

  ‘So,’ Ralegh, as usual, spoke first. ‘You will know that the doctor here has asked us to bend our minds to that, the assumption being that Walsingham was murdered.’

  ‘That is not an assumption, Sir Walter, that is now a fact. Lord Strange’s chemist, a man well versed in finding out poisons in small samples, has isolated the source of the Spymaster’s last illness, in the dregs of his cup, though he suspects that the poison had been administered at least twice before the fatal dose. This was no accident. Although the agents can be made from easily obtainable ingredients, it cannot be a normal constituent of any food. No – Sir Francis was deliberately done to death.’

  A ripple of astonishment ran around the room. Those who still held goblets pushed them away. It was Strange who articulated what they were all feeling. ‘Kit,’ he said softly. ‘You have your man here with you. Before we go further, I should like to invite mine to this presence. I’d feel more comfortable were he at my back.’

  ‘I’d echo that,’ Percy said, suddenly feeling uneasy.

  ‘Marlowe?’ Dee looked at the man.

  ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘I have no objection.’

  ‘Carter,’ Dee said. ‘Go to the kitchen, will you and bring these gentlemen’s people? Although,’ he waited until Carter had gone, ‘I am not sure we need witnesses to this.’

  ‘Oh, I am sure we do,’ Hariot said and sat back, folding his arms.

  ‘Seven chairs,’ Percy said, looking around the room. ‘And six of us. Who is the seventh for? You, Marlowe?’

  ‘No, Your Grace,’ Marlowe said solemnly. ‘Call it a theatrical fancy of mine. In the next few moments, the seventh seat will be occupied by Francis Walsingham’s murderer.’

  The uproar threatened to drown out Marlowe’s voice and he waited until Carter came back with the others, liveried servants, the loyal and true who fetched and carried for the great and good in that room. When the hubbub had died down, Marlowe faced them all, standing behind the seventh chair. Each of the seated gentlemen had his servant standing behind him, Carter taking his rightful place behind Dee.

  ‘You are the School of Night,’ Marlowe began.

  ‘How the Devil—?’ but Ralegh never finished his sentence.

  ‘I told you, Sir Walter,’ Marlowe cut in. ‘I am a projectioner. How did I know about the School of Night? You gave the name, Dr Dee the essence. And anyway, it’s my job to know. One of you in this room killed the Queen’s Spymaster. I intend to find out who.’

  ‘I’ve had enough of this,’ Salazar said, already on his feet, his manservant stepping back to let him pass.

  ‘Stay where you are, sir!’ Dee bellowed. No one was going to break the half-circle tonight. Salazar slunk back to his chair and his man took up his position behind him, hands folded lightly together in the small of his back, eyes fixed on an indeterminate point near the ceiling.

  ‘John Dee,’ Marlowe said, turning to face him. ‘The Queen’s magus. I know your powers, Dr Dee. I have seen them myself. You twist men’s minds, tie their tongues and throw magic dust in their eyes. Smoke and mirrors? Maybe. But my man Tom Sledd at the Rose can do as much, with light and sound. No, your magic is real and a blacker art never existed. If anyone could slip poison into Walsingham’s drink or his food, it is you.’

  Dee could hardly believe what he was hearing. Marlowe had asked him to set up this meeting and he had told him why. One of the others had killed Walsingham, not the magus himself. How dare he? ‘What was my mot
ive?’ Dee asked archly, sitting upright and feeling Carter stiffen behind him.

  Marlowe’s dark eyes flashed fire briefly and he smiled. He clapped his hands once, twice, a flutter. ‘Bravo, Doctor,’ he said. ‘A sharper mind never graced England. You are the Queen’s magus. Walsingham was the Queen’s Spymaster. You both worship the same woman. There would be no gain in murdering a fellow patriot.’

  ‘What of me?’ Ralegh asked. ‘I worship the Queen too.’

  Marlowe turned to him. ‘Indeed you do, Sir Walter,’ he said. ‘All you have is because of her and you have been known to lie like a dog outside her chamber in your pretty armour, keeping her safe.’

  Ralegh shrugged. ‘It was my pleasure,’ he said.

  ‘Unfortunately, as I have all too much reason to know, Bess Throckmorton is your pleasure too, isn’t she?’

  Ralegh turned crimson, but said nothing.

  ‘And if the Queen were to find out, your days would not be long in the land. There would be no more expeditions to the New World, no more fat profits from your estates, no more openings at court, if I may use that term in the circumstances.’

  Strange let out a laugh. ‘Back to Bess Throckmorton again,’ he said, under his breath. He acknowledged Marlowe as a true genius with words, yet again.

  Ralegh was on his feet, his dagger glinting in his hand. ‘You’ll take that back, Strange,’ he said, gravel in his voice.

  ‘Walter!’ Dee chided. ‘Not now, for God’s sake. Sit down.’

  ‘I don’t think God interests Sir Walter very much,’ Marlowe said, ‘because he doesn’t believe there is a God.’

  A sudden silence filled the room, chill despite the fire. Both Strange and his man crossed themselves. Ralegh’s dagger tip pointed to Marlowe. ‘I thought it was you who dared God out of His Heaven,’ he said. ‘“Moses was but a conjuror and John the Baptist was a bedfellow to Jesus.” I am quoting you there, Marlowe, am I not?’

  The playwright-projectioner smiled. ‘I have often been misquoted, Sir Walter,’ he said.