Between Westminster and the City of London, Durham House was one of several prestigious properties overlooking the Thames from the north bank. Originally built for top churchmen, they’d long been co-opted for royal use. A little more than a decade before, Queen Elizabeth had given the lease for most of the sprawling mansion to her favorite courtier at the time, Sir Walter Ralegh.
Rising straight up from the riverbank, its bellicose facade dominated the skyline. Ralegh was sitting in one of the turrets. The little room was his study, and his sloped, wooden desk, delicately inlaid with pale wood, faced the curved window. With his crow’s feather quill in the air, he was contemplating the next stanza in a new poem he was writing, an epic devoted to his lengthy relationship with the queen. He’d titled itThe Book of the Ocean to Cynthia.
In the early 1580s, Ralegh, the son of a tenant farmer, had won Elizabeth’s heart with his dramatic gestures, sparkling wit, and razorlike tongue. For a decade his jests amused her, his poetry pleased her, and he rarely left her side. The besotted queen gave him valuable monopolies, properties, and responsibilities, and his wealth and prestige grew rapidly. He was, perhaps, the most envied man in England. The previous year, however, everything had changed.
When his secret marriage to one of her maids of honor came to light, Elizabeth had him thrown in the Tower. At liberty now, Ralegh remained banished from her sight. Spending most of his time at his country estate in western Dorset, he slipped into London for only the most pressing of engagements. He was planning a voyage to the New World, a quest for the golden city of El Dorado, concealed deep within the jungles of Guiana. The ability to go on one of the ventures he planned was the saving grace of his exile; in the years preceding it, during the voyages to Virginia in the mid-1580s, Elizabeth had insisted that he not leave the British Isles.
Reaching for his enameled inkpot, Ralegh dipped his quill once more and penned his final lines for the day, the closing to the tenth book of his lengthy epic. Gazing down to the river below, he saw Kit step ashore from a riverboat. His peers might frown on him for mingling with a lowly playmaker, but the fellow was unbeatable company—had a restless intellect and spoke his mind as no one at court dared, which for Ralegh, was enormously refreshing. He’d had enough of the senseless chatter, lies, and false smiles bandied about Elizabeth’s court.
Ralegh had met Marlowe years before during one of his visits to Henry Percy’s country estate in Sussex. Percy, the ninth Earl of Northumberland, had one of the most well-stocked libraries in England, with more than two thousand volumes spilling forth from dozens of chests. Marlowe had been there for several weeks perusing Percy’s extensive collection of occult literature, works by Europe’s most famous magi—Cornelius Agrippa, Giovanni Battista della Porta, Giordano Bruno, John Dee, and others—research for what became hisDr. Faustus. Ralegh and Percy had spent the days hunting and hawking, Marlowe reading, and in the evenings, the budding playmaker had joined them for smoking and philosophical debates over games of cards or dice.
With a red ribbon, Ralegh tied his thick sheaf of pages together, stood, and carried the parcel toward the stairwell.
When he saw Ralegh approaching, Marlowe smiled. With his impressive height, flamboyant clothing, glittering jewels, and sword hanging by his side, his swarthy friend looked every bit the dashing explorer bound for exotic lands.
Marlowe had taken a liking to Ralegh long before they’d met, considering him something of a kindred spirit. The courtier’s famous wit and penchant for defying convention were legendary during Marlowe’s early years at Cambridge. But his affectionate regard was truly secured when Ralegh—who held a monopoly for the sale of wines—infuriated the university’s puritanical administration by licensing a wine shop less than a mile away. For Marlowe, the convenience of nearby liquor was a boon in and of itself, but the sight of dusty dons shaking their fists at stumbling students was priceless.
They embraced.
“Ah, presents.”
Ralegh laughed. “Not exactly. It’s a new poem I’m working on. I thought you might have a look. I was planning to, uh…”
“Publish it?” Marlowe asked wryly. It was considered crass for gentlemen in Ralegh’s circle to do something soterribly commercial. Aristocratic poets usually circulated their work quietly among friends for private amusement, not profit.
“At the moment I’m simply interested in your opinion, but when I’ve finished the last two sections…”
“An anonymous publication that could never be traced to you? It’s possible.” As they headed inside, Marlowe tucked the scroll into his satchel. “So, I hear you’re preparing for another conquest, my friend. More virginal lands to enter, and, uh, plunder?”
“As ever, Kit, thy words are swords,” Ralegh replied, leading Marlowe to his private apartment on the uppermost floor. “But you’re hardly the first.” Ever since he’d seduced one of the queen’s ladies, Ralegh had been the butt of an endless series of similar jokes.
The dining room table was covered with a thick red cloth, and matching tassled cushions rested on the benches. Pewter dishware and utensils were neatly arranged, candles lit, wine poured, and a baked peacock—with its magnificent tail fanned out over the edge of the platter—awaited them.
Taking a seat, Ralegh tugged on a crispy leg. “I’m searching for El Dorado, city of gold nestled on the shores of Lake Manoa. Ruled by the descendants of an Incan prince.” He leaned forward. “My sources say the kingdom has more riches than Peru. Temples filled with golden idols, sepulchres heaping with treasure…”
Listening to Ralegh’s glittering descriptions, Marlowe wondered how reliable those sources actually were. Captured sailors, he imagined, would spin almost any tale when threatened with torture.
“I sent out reconnaissance fleets this month past,” Ralegh added. “Should hear their reports by summer. We will outshine the Spanish, my friend.”
“I’ll drink to that.”
“Wait. I haven’t yet told you my most exciting piece of news.”
“You’ve secured the funding?” Seeing Ralegh’s surprise, Marlowe explained, “Tavern gossip. How’d you do it?”
“Well, who wouldn’t want the chance to multiply their money a thousandfold? I simply spoke of the golden city, presented the eyewitness accounts, and my benefactor opened his coffers with a willingness more in keeping with a baser sort of transaction.”
“And this randy fairy godfather is…?”
“Robert Cecil.”
“But he’s in debt!”
“Can’t be. He’s promised me fifty thousand pounds.”
“I guess the rumor I heard was false,” Marlowe murmured. But it hadn’t been a rumor. Cecil was so desperate for money the previous year that he’d asked Marlowe to counterfeit coins. The man would definitely not have instigated a treasonous crime if he’d had tens of thousands of pounds to spare, so he must have come into the money recently. Was Cecil the Muscovy man dealing with Helen’s pirate captain?
“When do you set off?” Marlowe asked.
“In the next year or two. We’re still working out the navigational routes, preparing equipment lists…”
“A shame it’s not as easy to travel…” Marlowe lifted his gaze to the ceiling.
Ralegh rose from his seat with an enigmatic grin. “Come with me.”
Marlowe followed him down the hall to Tom Hariot’s lodgings on the north side of the house.
Maps, atlases, and countless pages of numerical tables covered the desks in Hariot’s study, as did the tools of his many ongoing experiments. A glass orb filled with water, suspended from the ceiling by a metal hook, drew Marlowe’s attention first. A piece of stiff parchment with a hole in the center hung between the orb and the nearest window.Hmm.
An Oxford graduate, Hariot was an expert in mathematics, optics, astronomy, and cartography. As well as experimenting, he kept Ralegh’s financial records, gave seminars on navigation to Ralegh’s ship captains, and drew up maps of the shorelines Ralegh intend
ed to explore.
Facing the opposite direction, Hariot seemed oblivious to their entrance. He was writing furiously. From his staccato arm movements, Marlowe guessed he was working with figures. Hariot was remarkably quick with them, so much so that he was a near priceless asset when it came to betting over rounds of triumph or piquet. But unfortunately for Marlowe, shortly after Hariot had mastered the art of counting playing cards and calculating odds, he’d tired of it and had yet to be coaxed back to a game. Such coaxing was a mission Marlowe typically pursued with vigor, but at the moment, he was curious about Hariot’s newest discoveries. The man was brilliant.
“You’re well, Tom?”
Hariot jumped. “Been better,” he said, turning around.
“What vexes you?”
“Rainbows.”
“Iris still outrunning you, is she?”
Harriot nodded, chagrined. “But I do know a few things,” he said with quiet pride, gesturing to a glass basin. It was filled halfway with water, and a stick had been placed inside. About a foot long, the stick was only partially submerged. Hariot took a candle and brought it close to the basin. “The stick,” he said. “What do you notice?”
Marlowe shrugged. “Looks ordinary enough.”
“Its shape?”
“Bent.”
Hariot lifted it out. It was perfectly straight.
Ralegh and Marlowe waited expectantly.
“Light bends when it enters liquid,” Hariot explained.
“What has that to do with rainbows?”
“The sky is full of tiny droplets of water, and rays of sunlight bend as they enter. It’s a process called refraction. Then, when the rays hit the back wall of the droplet, they reflect off it, bouncing back. The rainbow has something to do with those angles, of the sunlight’s refraction and reflection. I’ve been studying the measurements, but…”
“If the sky is full of droplets, why a thin bow?” Marlowe asked. “In one particular place?”
“Has to do with the angle between the sun’s rays behind you, the droplets of water in the sky, and your eyes, here on earth.”
“And the colors?”
“I’m, uh…”
“I have faith in you,” Marlowe said.
Ralegh caught Hariot’s eye. “Is it a good night for…”
“Perfect. You wish to—”
Ralegh nodded.
Marlowe watched with interest. Hariot moved toward a rope hanging from the ceiling and pulled. With a loud creak, a door swung downward, a folded ladder attached to it. Hariot started climbing.
Close on his heels, Marlowe found himself in a dark chamber. Hariot pushed outward against one of its walls. Moonlight streamed in. One by one, they stepped from the dormer onto the gently sloping roof.
Hariot retrieved a long, odd-looking metal tube from a box sitting near the roof’s edge. Sitting down, he leaned back, brought the tube to his eye, and pointed it at the sky. Bringing his hands closer together, he adjusted the two cylinders. The bottom half of the tube was thicker than the half near Hariot’s face and seemed to slide right over it. “There she is,” he whispered. “Kit, have a look.”
Sitting next to him, Marlowe took the heavy tube and noticed a curved piece of glass just inside the opening. It was smooth, like that in a pair of spectacles. He peered through.
“Use your other eye to help you train it on the moon,” Hariot said.
Marlowe did. “Good God! What…?”
“It’s a perspective trunk,” Hariot said. “Makes the moon appear several times its size.”
“It seems so close…the details, so sharp!”
“You’ve long spoken of exploring the heavens,” Ralegh said, “and as none of my ships sail in that direction…”
Marlowe, Ralegh, and Hariot, high up on the roof of Durham House, assumed they were alone—free from prying eyes and suspicious ears. They were wrong.
Half a dozen yards away, a man was sitting on one of the upper branches of a nearby tree, watching as they lit up pipes and gazed at the sky. His name was Richard Baines, and it was he who’d followed Marlowe from London Bridge.
Probing God’s mysteries is the devil’s work, Baines was thinking to himself. No wonder people call Hariot a diabolical conjurer.
Baines’s employer wanted proof of Marlowe’s supposed atheism. Evidence could always be manufactured—it was done all the time—but Baines took his espionage work quite seriously. At the very least, he wanted there to be a few kernels of truth to his accusations.
As soon as Marlowe had announced his destination to the boatman, Baines had suspected that the evening’s eavesdropping would prove a gold mine. Both Marlowe and Ralegh were notorious heretics.
And how right he had been. What he had just heard was enough to ensure that the only place Marlowe would be exploring was a prison cell.
You can sit on a tree branch only so long before your rear end goes numb. One of the knots digging into Baines’s flesh felt like a torture device. Grimacing, he shifted with discomfort.
On the other side of the Thames in Southwark, a Dutch woman named Eva was shifting about as well. But rather than on a tree branch, she was sitting on her kitchen table. And instead of discomfort, she was squirming with pleasure. She had Robert Poley’s head up her skirt and was praying that her husband wouldn’t come home from the tavern early and find her in such an indelicate position.
To most people adultery is a form of cheating. But according to Robert Poley’s unique personal code, when playing the romantic game, paying for sex was actually the lowest form of cheating, and seducing another man’s wife was the most honorable form of success. The Dutch glassmaker’s young blond wife was his latest triumph, though hardly his greatest.
Years before, when Francis Walsingham was still alive, Poley had taken the great spymaster’s daughter to bed, who at the time was married to the beloved poet Sir Philip Sidney. Now the former Lady Sidney was married to the Earl of Essex, and to Poley’s delight, she still had a weakness for him. He made a mental note to arrange a rendezvous with her soon. And perhaps this time he’d tell Cecil. No doubt his employer would be pleased that he was bedding the enemy’s wife.
Poley’s greatest romantic failure, on the other hand, had been with Mary, Queen of Scots. During the final years of her life, when she was imprisoned at Tutbury Castle, he had been sent to pose as a sympathizer, a covert Catholic who could help smuggle her correspondence. He would meet the queen as she rode through Tutbury’s parks and soon learned that her reputation as a dangerous temptress could not have been further from the truth. The sad and devoted woman wrote dozens of love letters to the husband she would never see again. Once in a while, she cried with gratitude on Poley’s shoulder as he assured her they would reach their destination. It was a lie but one worth telling. He’d been touched by the depth and endurance of her love and had quickly abandoned his original mission to become her last lover. The nemesis of Walsingham’s secret service—inspiration to Catholic plotters throughout the Isles and across Europe—was just a lonely, aging woman longing for her husband. She would never be free, but with his false reassurances, Poley had hoped she would at least die in peace.
During those afternoons with Mary, Poley had learned something about himself. Betrayal might be his livelihood and greatest form of plea-sure, but when it involved someone he respected, he lost interest. And beyond that, he wanted to help whoever was trapped in the tangle of government plotting. It didn’t happen often, not once since Mary, but with the news of Kit Marlowe’s predicament, the long-dormant part of his soul had awakened. He liked the charming playmaker, admired his reckless flouting of all that was foolish in their country.
Buttoning his linen shirt, he kissed Eva good-bye.
By the empty bear-baiting arena, Poley saw Teresa Ramires, a voluptuous raven-haired girl, standing in a shaft of moonlight. A maid in Essex’s household, Teresa was one of Poley’s most valuable informants.
“Hello Rob,” she said, offering her hand
palm up.
Poley reached into his pocket. “I assume this will be worth it?” he asked, holding up a shilling.
Teresa nodded. “I don’t know exactly where Kit Marlowe is…”
Poley brought the coin back toward his pocket.
“But I do know that Phelippes is paying him to investigate one of the trading companies. The, uh…”
“Levant Company? Morocco? Muscovy?”
Teresa nodded. “Muscovy, that’s the one. Phelippes suspects smuggling of some sort.”
“By whom? Did he say?”
“No, but he’s to Essex House tomorrow. I’ll linger about.”
“Good,” Poley said, giving her the shilling. “Meet me here at noon.”
As Teresa sauntered off, Poley stared at the Thames, mulling over her information. Apparently one or more of the merchants and courtiers in the Muscovy Company had something to hide, and Marlowe might be close to exposing it. Must be the reason for the “Tamburlaine” placard, Poley thought to himself. Marlowe’s closing in on the truth, and this smuggler or smugglers mean to stop him.Well, they won’t. I shall see to that.
17
ST.JAMES’S, LONDON—9:40P.M., THE PRESENT DAY
Surina. How is he?” de Tolomei asked. He was lying on a floral sofa in his suite at the Ritz, his cell phone to his ear.
“Gaining a little weight, sir. His wounds are healing nicely, too. The doctor said he should wake up any day now, but…”
“What is it?”
“He’s been having these…spasms. I, well, I was holding his hand earlier and it…it twitched. Several times.”
“He was in a terrible prison for years, Surina. Among other things, he was tortured with electric shock.”
“May I ask, uh…”
“He’s not a criminal, Surina. He was betrayed by his country.”
“Oh.”
“How areyou doing?”
The Intelligencer Page 20