The Point of Death

by Peter Tonkin

  'I am not the man you stay for, Lord Henry,' said Tom at once. 'But I bring you news of him.' Tom had been raised on tales of what this man had done in the Borders and he knew that the time for codes and secret messages was long past. As well try to shally with the Lord of the North as with Her Majesty herself. The truth might save them. Anything else was like to bury them, Rose and all. Six hundred men had been hanged in aftermath of the last raid he had quelled. Six hundred more than the dead already choking Hell Beck. It was the better part of twenty-five years since, but Tom had been there, a child, to see and learn.

  He straightened now, to look into that long, thoughtful face with its almost semicircular black eyebrows with their slightly protuberant, dark-brown, intelligent and fiercely independent eyes. The high cheekbones and broad jaw supporting a full, white-silver beard. 'I am Thomas Musgrave, Lord Henry, of Bewcastle in your own West March and nephew to the Lord of Bewcastle himself. It chances that I can tell you of Julius Morton, and, perhaps, serve you.'

  There was silence. Tom stood, tall and proud, waiting for his fate to come to him. He looked into the Lord Chamberlain's eyes and the Queen's own eyes looked back at him with the most uncanny family resemblance.

  Then the figure in the corner spoke. His voice was a familiar, cold drawl; one that had lain in Tom's memory and rung in his dreams since he stood on that hilltop by Nijmagen with his message seven years ago. 'Here's a strange thing,' said the familiar voice. 'This is the second time to my certain knowledge that our young Master of Logic has stood before the Queen's right-hand man armed with far more knowledge than a mortal has a right to know.' The stranger in the shadows stood, and stepped out into the light. Once again Tom found himself confronted by the lean face, icy eyes and cool, unnerving intelligence of this man who interrupted dukes without a second thought.

  'Tell the Lord Chamberlain what you know - what you think you know,' the stranger ordered. 'And bear in mind that evasion and equivocation are like to make you close acquainted with the Tower and with Rackmaster Topcliffe.'

  Had Tom been unnerved by the stranger's threat, his disquiet would not have lasted long, for Lord Henry Carey leaned forward suddenly. 'I know this man,' he said quietly. 'I know his uncle and his family. They have been of service to me. And that is more than you have been of late, Master Poley; more than Topcliffe has ever been. So think on that.'

  But Tom hardly heard. He launched into what he had learned and deduced, fighting to pull everything so far into enough of a pattern to impress the Council. 'Julius Morton might have been your man and working about your business, Lord Henry, but he was using the Rose as a mask or vizzard to cover the truth. And he had somehow contrived to move beyond the bounds of your protection, for he has been murdered, not a day since, at the Rose itself. I believe he saw his death coming and hoped to avoid it on the Rose's stage - perhaps escape it there a while. But it was waiting for him there and there it took him in spite of all. He was murdered by a secret blow from a rapier blade of the finest quality, wielded by a great Master. He died, but not at once. Dying, he spoke in cyphers, I believe, giving a message to someone in the audience, passing a plague on two houses and talking of worms' meat and I know not what else. But I have a note of every word he spoke and a Master of Cyphers to translate them. I have examined the body and seen that Morton was run through the chest from back to front so that the wound is widest near the spine, narrower near the left pap and narrowest of all where it pricked his hand. I have acted the murder over and believe it could only be performed by an ambidextrous; and I find that there is such a man, a Master of Spain, currently given entertainment at Essex House. I have hidden the body where none are likely to disturb it and I have hurried hither to tell my Lord Strange's executor of the situation and seek his advice, for we are still Lord Strange's Men and careful of his honour and reputation.'

  'God's my life,' gasped Lord Henry, half awed, half amused. 'I would I had some such as you to be careful of my reputation. Is there anything he has missed?' He turned to the stranger, Poley.

  'How would summoning the law harm Lord Strange's reputation?' he asked now. 'The reputation of a murdered man can stand a deal of shaking ere it fall.'

  Murdered? thought Tom. Now no one had yet seen fit to mention that fact to him. And yet someone in the Rose Company should have known - should have said - something.

  'Perhaps it would not, sir,' he persisted as his mindspan, weighing alternatives. 'We sought only time and wise council. Perhaps we have done wrong. Certainly, had Her Majesty been at Westminster, or here, we would have called for justice under the verge, safe in the knowledge that Sir William Danby -' He stopped then, for the association of the names made the scales fall from his eyes, like Saul on the road to Damascus, and he wasn't at all sure that he liked what he could see. The shock of it was enough to make him set aside all thoughts of Lord Strange being murdered. His mind was simply knocked on to a new line of thinking entirely.

  'Go on,' prompted Lord Henry. 'What would you have done next had we not called you here in error?'

  'Reported to Sir Walter, warned him of the situation.'

  'Say he had felt Lord Strange's name to rest safe with you; what then?' Lord Henry's interest appeared genuine, almost academic. As though Tom's willingness to work outside the law and the social system made him some kind of rare specimen. Some kind of new tobacco to be savoured thoughtfully, in a long pipe.

  'Searched Morton's room, my lord. It seems to me that having hid the body puts us out of step with the law, even the Bishop's law in Bankside. So I would want to arm myself with the greatest store of knowledge I could gain before I went beating on the Bailiff's door.'

  Lord Henry shook his head in wonder. He looked across at both Poley and Collingwood. 'It is almost as though the hand of God is in this,' he said with genuine wonder. 'We have lost our man and at once found a better man to replace him. And beyond the room, what then?'

  'Find out the identity of the Spanish assassin if I could. Start to search for the contact Morton was trying to give his message to. Find out what exactly Morton's employment was whose wages were half a fathom of cold steel in his heart.'

  Lord Henry threw himself back in his chair. 'A Master of Logic indeed. I doubt that even Pythagoras turned spy could have expounded a deadly theorem as clear as this. But it leaves us at a crossroad, does it not, with only two ways left to follow.'

  'Should Master Musgrave wait without?' suggested Collingwood.

  'No. You brought him in - and I see you are still a little pale from the shock. But you were moved by God's own hand I doubt not. And the Master of Logic here can see our paths before us as clearly as we - and if he could not, he would doubtless be listening at the keyhole.

  'Master Musgrave. Either we must employ you or bury you. That is all there is of the matter. I have told Master Poley here that I know you and your family. I have regard to your uncle, the Lord of Bewcastle, even though he has taken the title for himself with none of our giving. I know your father, I believe, and your brother the blacksmith. I would prefer to employ you. But such is the moment of what we are about here, that if there is a shadow of a doubt, a shadow of a shade, then I will order you dead without a second thought.'

  'And I will wield the blade,' said Poley.

  'As you did with Kit Marlowe last year. I doubt it not,' said Tom, looking Poley straight in the eye. 'The content of Sir William Danby's Crowner's Quest has been the gossip of Bankside this half-year and more.'

  'Then you know it was Ingram Frizer who held the knife, not I.'

  'Master Poley, I care not who the puppet was. I know who pulled the strings.'

  'Now, if I really thought you did know that,' said Robert Poley quietly, 'then your life would be over for certain.'

  The two men measured each other with calculating eyes. Then Poley turned. 'He is a master indeed, my lord. To throw such a weapon away untested would be a mortal sin. Will you work for me, Master of Logic?'

  'Doing what?'

 
; 'Performing the actions you have described. The search, the contact, the identification. But this time you will not be alone - you will be using my men, my contacts, my information, to speed you on your way. And, may I remind you of the alternative.' His hand vanished into his clothing. Tom's hand slammed on to his sword-hilt. Poley's reappeared as though by magic, armed with a double-barrelled dag.

  'If the springs on the wheel lock have been wound since I came in, they'll likely misfire now,' said Tom. 'Two steps and I'll have you skewered.

  'Care to risk it?' asked Poley, quietly. 'Do, or die.'

  Chapter Twelve - The Man Who Murdered Marlowe

  The wrath of Lord Henry was terrible to see. It was identical to the wrath of his cousin the Queen and echoed in many ways that of his maternal Uncle King Henry, whose rages were infamous. His anger now would have crushed most men - would have annihilated Walter Collingwood had it been so aimed. It was just enough to stop Tom and Poley killing each other. For the time being. And to ally them in the same cause, in the Council's business and under Lord Henry's command. For the moment.

  The pair of them took a wherry from Whitehall Stairs to Blackfriars Steps. As the little boat swept eastward with the current so they settled back into conference -but at Poley's frown towards the wherryman's large ears, they talked of generalities as though they were friends. Their first destination was Tom's fencing school where he would change his clothes into something more serviceable and less conspicuous. There they would make further plans, for their next task would have to be to search Morton's rooms.

  'Do you fence, Master Poley?' asked the social Tom as the wherry slid under Bride well and into the stinking outflow of the Fleet River.

  'Not in the Italian style,' answered Poley shortly.

  'But you carry a rapier, and a good one by the looks of it.'

  'The best money can buy. The handle is from Ferrara like your own, but the blade is German. One of the new blades from Solingen.'

  'I have heard of these blades but I must admit that I have never seen one. Perhaps you will permit me to inspect it at my school.'

  'Perhaps. In time. On better acquaintance, if it comes.'

  Out they leaped at Blackfriars Steps and swaggered side by side up into Water Lane. 'Even so,' continued Tom, 'It is God's own pity to carry such a weapon and not to use it well.'

  'I prefer to rely on other defences, as you know.'

  Tom's school was in a long building backing on to the Wall with its front in Blackfriars hard by Ludgate - the path and the prison - a mere step or two from the bustling heart of the city, St Paul's. It was situated above a haberdashery and was carefully sited there. The haberdasher, Master Robert Aske, kept fashionable, quiet, fragrant premises, bright with buttons, tapes, ribbons, sequins, lengths of lace, cloth of gold, shoe-buckles, feathers, Spanish pins and needles and thread to attach them with, all at the very point of the pinnacle of fashion. He and Tom had a simple agreement which worked to their mutual advantage - Tom's rent was low but it was rare indeed for one of his fashionable pupils not to supplement his wardrobe on the way in or out of school. And Tom's simple advantage was that this successful retail was one of the few businesses in London that did not generate the most noxious of odours. Had his school stood above a spicer's or a baker's, it would have served, perhaps, for the smells wafting upwards would not have been offensive. But above a tanner's, a dyer's, a butcher's, a pie man's, a cheese merchant's, a blacksmith's, it would scarcely have been possible to breathe.

  Ugo met them at the top of the stairs. He was standing in the little reception area outside the fencing room with a handful of the sticks Tom used to train the absolute beginners in the basics. 'Who's this?' he asked. 'A new client? You'll have trouble fitting him in today. Your hours are busy between this and sunset.'

  'No,' said Tom forthrightly. 'He's a spy.'

  'God's...' spat Poley, pulling out his dag once again and levelling it at Tom.

  Tom paid no attention. Walking forward unhurriedly, he opened a door into a long, bright room further illuminated by his most expensive possession - even including his Ferrara blades. Poley froze in little short of wonder, looking into the largest, longest mirror he had ever seen. 'You haven't reset the springs on that dag,' said Tom conversationally. 'It'll be all but useless by now, Master Poley. Ugo's a gunsmith. Do you want him to take a look at it? From the sound of things we'll be going through Alsatia between darkfall and the Bellman. You'll likely need it then.'

  Poley pulled the triggers, both of them. Ugo knocked the dag up with the sticks he was carrying so that, had it fired, it would have peppered the ceiling. But nothing of the sort happened. The pistol fell from Poley's grasp and Ugo caught it.

  Tom turned and his sword was in his hand, the point of it exactly on the bridge of Poley's long, slightly hooked nose. 'Almost everyone I know in London,' said Tom quietly, 'would like you to feel what Kit Marlowe felt during the last few seconds of his life, Master Poley. It is time for you to make up your mind to it. Work with me as equal, not puppet master, with plain dealing and honesty, and I will serve your ends to the top of my bent. And those of Lord Hunsdon too. But if you are looking to work with shifting, equivocating or double dealing, then tell me now and you can talk things over with Marlowe himself. His spirit is not so far above us but yours could overtake him, I doubt not.'

  'Ha!' laughed Poley, without moving his face a whisker. 'You taunt me with words from Shakespeare's new play.'

  Tom stood back and lowered his point, eyeing Poley with new respect. 'Fix his pistol, Ugo,' he said. Ugo vanished. 'You were there?' Tom continued in almost the same breath. 'There has only been one performance. How else could you know the line? You must have been there.'

  'I have spoken with one that was.'

  'Morton's contact?'

  'Alas, no. Someone who was watching Morton's contact.'

  'But also someone who was watching the play - and closely if they gave you a flavour of the lines. Too closely, perhaps, if he and you have lost sight of Morton's man.'

  'As you say. But, in the spirit of forthright dealing, I must tell you that the recipient of Morton's message was no man.'

  'A boy?'

  Poley shook his head.

  Tom frowned. In this new world of spycraft he felt he was learning the rules swiftly and well. They were not so very different from the rules in his other worlds of fencing and acting - nothing was quite what it seemed and all was feign and feint. Even so, it required that he stretch his view of the way the world worked to accept a female spy. But then he thought of Constanza, her cards and her contacts and he realised - he already knew one. His mind seemed to explode then, teeming with questions for Poley, but before he could utter even the first of them, Ugo came back. 'It needs new springs,' he said, handing the dag to Lord Hunsdon's spy. 'But I fixed it for the time being. The first student's due on the stroke of noon, Tom,' he warned, and behind his words all the bells from St Dunstan's to St Paul's struck the hour, and time for further conference was at an end.

  Six hours later, Tom was aflame. Never the type of Master to stand against the wall calling time, distance and proportion, rapping out his minim rests, he worked with his students toe to toe and blade against blade. Twelve half-hour lessons had left his muscles hot and supple and his heart singing as it thundered. And, if the truth be known, his blood-lust just within bounds.

  With a white linen cloth draped round his neck above his black collar, he walked through to the back rooms where Ugo had placed a ewer of washing water and a jug of drinking water purchased from the water carrier at the corner of Paul's Churchyard. A swift wash and Tom was through into the smallest room in the house. Here, lit by a narrow garret supplemented by a pair of carefully protected lamps, was Ugo's workshop. Here lay a range of paraphernalia that would be likely to get him arrested if the authorities knew of it. Particularly as he was Dutch and the influx of foreigners from the Low Countries had been the cause of riots in the streets and a great deal of disquiet in the cor
ridors of power of late.

  Ugo looked up from his work. 'You play fast and loose with your own life, Tom, but have a care to mine.'

  'I will, Ugo. But think on. This Poley has a direct line to Court. He works for the Lord Chamberlain and the good Lord alone knows who else. And he lives in a world I was born to live in. He walks paths I was made to tread. I feel as Will must have felt first seeing his play up on a stage.'

  'Poley is deadly dangerous. The hand that can raise us up could cast us down as easy.' 'True. And you are more at risk than I am at the moment. But he is at risk himself. Think who he is. I have but to name him on the Bankside and cry clubs and his brains will be in the kennel quicker than it takes to tell. He knows this. I will have a care, however. I know you are at risk. But always remember, we owe a debt to Julius Morton. Like Kit Marlowe, whatever else he was he was one of us, and Master Henslowe, Will and the rest are looking to us to unmask the man who did the murder- and the hand behind the hand. Master Poley is about the same business. The hounds of Athens and the hounds of Troy would run together if they were hunting the same quarry. So we may run with Master Poley for a while. And so he must be made privy to this place.'

  'He guesses at it already. I fixed his dag.'

  'I had to make sure he came back, Ugo. Things are not settled between us. He has not yet told me of the matter Morton was looking into for him - though I suspect it must have something to do with the murder of Lord Strange. Be that as it may, he might well decide to search Morton's rooms and vanish. There are places yet the Council's writ might not run. That would be very bad for us because we still stand outside the law holding the body of a murdered spy. There is much we have to learn before we are safe and all secure - and he knows much of it if he can be tempted into telling. His co-operation would make our task easier and quicker. But he knows we need him more than he needs us at the moment. So, give him a sniff at what you have in here and he will be back like a roaring boy after tobacco and we have him to hand like a haggard hawk.'