The Scar-Crow Men

CHAPTER ELEVEN




‘WHO KILLED CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE?’ CARPENTER ASKED IN A low voice. The guttering candle in the centre of the beer-stained trestle illuminated the unease in his features.

Enveloped in the shadows that engulfed the rest of the small, hot, low-ceilinged room, Will and Launceston leaned in to the dying flame.

‘We have a few suspects,’ Will mused, his mood as dark as when he had left the Palace of Whitehall. ‘Frizer, the one who stood accused at the inquest. Poley, his associate, a man we all know is capable of anything.’ He paused, damping down his anger. ‘Or even Thomas Walsingham, Kit’s patron. There were always rumours that their relationship was more than just business, but who knows? I saw little sign of grief in him. Yet Kit’s young friend Tom said Marlowe was gripped with a fear for his own life that very same morning. Would he then proceed to a meeting with the men he was afraid would kill him?’

‘When your attacker’s devil-mask slipped at the Rose, you say you thought you knew the face beneath?’ Carpenter enquired.

‘’Twas a glimpse. The merest suggestion of recognition. I would not say more than that.’

‘Hrrrm,’ the Earl said thoughtfully. ‘One spy dead, another attacked. But what part does this devil of yours play? This vision you had of the Unseelie Court?’

Will listened to the sound of energetic lovemaking reverberating through the ceiling from the room of one of Liz Longshanks’ doxies. The bedroom at the top of the Bankside stew, and his favourite comely companions, pulled at him, but instead he was there, sequestered in the private room at the back where the rich merchants drank before indulging their carnal desires. ‘I have thought about this a great deal, and I have come to believe that it was a warning.’

‘From whom?’ Launceston breathed.

‘Kit Marlowe. He knew nothing of conjuring devils. All he conjured was words. I have no idea how he could have brought that … that thing,’ the spy flinched at a painful vision of Jenny, black eyes gleaming, ‘into existence on the stage.’

‘There are plenty in the government and the court who considered him devilish for his outspoken views,’ the white-faced man continued.

‘The vision felt like it was a portent, perhaps, or some kind of guidance, though it had the feel of a dream. Fractured. Symbolic. Off-kilter.’

‘Then what use is it?’ Carpenter sniffed.

Frustrated, Will reflected for a moment, then plucked a new candle from the mantelpiece and lit it with the dying flame of the old. The shadows in the room fled to the corners. From under his stool, he pulled the coarse sack young Tom had given him at the funeral, and tipped the sheaf of papers on to the table. Carpenter leaned past him to read the title scrawled on the front in Marlowe’s familiar flourish.

‘The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus. Why, it is only the play Marlowe presented at the Rose the other evening,’ the scar-faced man snorted. He went to a pewter tray on a stool in the corner and poured himself a goblet of malmsey wine.

With deft fingers, Will plucked the folded letter from under the string around the bundle. ‘Kit was keen that I received this work, and he has never given me one of his plays before.’ Holding the letter close to the candle, he scanned it quickly. The words had been written at speed, scrawled feverishly and at times blotted where the ink hadn’t dried before the letter was folded.

I fear this may be our last communication, my dear, trusted friend. The truth lies within. But seek the source of the lies without. Trust no one.

By the time Will had read the note, Carpenter was once again at his shoulder, his brow now furrowed. ‘Trust no one? This sounds to me very like a plot.’

‘That explains why Kit was not at his first night. He was in hiding.’ Will got up and went to the tray to pour himself some wine. He placed one foot upon a stool and sipped his drink, brooding.

Launceston drew his long, white fingers over the sheaf, stopping to tap on the wax that sealed the string. ‘A secret message, then. A warning,’ the Earl suggested in his whispery voice.

‘Trust no one,’ Carpenter repeated. ‘He states the obvious, for once. Damn this world we inhabit. Everyone keeps secrets, separate lives. We know little even of those we depend upon.’

‘As in life,’ Will said with a shrug.

Carpenter drained his drink in one go and slammed the goblet down on the trestle. ‘We expend all our energies keeping secrets from each other,’ he snarled, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘What would our old master Sir Francis have said? Since his death, our world has fallen into darkness, and we all march on the short road to hell.’

Will became aware of Launceston scrutinizing him. He had come to believe the Earl was acutely sensitive to the emotions of others because he couldn’t feel or understand his own. ‘What is it, Robert?’ he asked, taking a sip of his wine.

The Earl spread the fingers of both hands on the trestle before him. ‘I am thinking about the Irish woman you encountered in the churchyard, the one who spoke to your assistant at the Rose. She knows of the plot, somehow. You did not recognize her?’

‘He has forgotten more women who have graced his bed than you or I have ever encountered,’ Carpenter muttered.

‘She is not familiar, though I will pay strict attention if she crosses my path again. Perhaps she is a friend of Kit’s.’ He returned his gaze to the letter. The truth lies within. The playwright always chose his words with precision.

Launceston was thinking the same, Will could see. ‘If Marlowe could have written clearly, he would, but he was afraid his message would be intercepted,’ the Earl noted, tapping one scrupulously clean fingernail on the table. ‘And so, perhaps, he hid clues to what he knew within the words of his own play? The truth lies within would suggest that approach.’

‘Perhaps.’ As Will swigged his wine, he was struck by a revelation. ‘At the graveside, Kit’s patron told me that Sir Francis Walsingham’s grave at St Paul’s had been defaced. It puzzled me at the time. Who would do such a thing? But now I wonder … Tom met Kit at the river, not far from the cathedral.’

Carpenter leaned in, eager. ‘Marlowe could have left another message. He would have known such an act would reach our ears eventually.’

‘I think I should see the grave for myself, on the morrow,’ Will said, pouring himself another goblet of the sweet wine. ‘And while I busy myself with that task, I have a job for the two of you. Kit had a bolt-hole that few knew of, a small room in Alexander Marcheford’s lodging house not far from the Rose. Go there and find any information he might have left that would explain his death.’

‘But what is the plot?’ Carpenter hammered a fist on the trestle, his voice cracking with dismay. ‘To kill a pair of spies? Why go to such lengths? We kill ourselves sooner or later,’ he added with bitterness.

‘Trust no one, Kit said, and so we should not speak of this outside this room.’ Will tapped one finger on the table. ‘The court is already riven with factions. There are plots and counter-plots aplenty. In that unruly atmosphere, there is space for a greater plot to flourish, unseen by those charged with looking out for such dangers.’

‘The Unseelie Court plays a long game.’ Unblinking, the Earl watched the wavering flame, his pale skin even whiter in the light. ‘With so many of us distracted by threats within and without, this is a good time to strike.’

‘Nothing here makes sense! So many strands, yet we cannot weave them into any cloth. And meanwhile our fate approaches like the tide.’ Carpenter ran a hand through his long hair, his mood darkening by the moment. ‘What is happening to England?’ he added, his voice falling to a mutter. ‘Since the Armada was defeated, we have been cursed with bad luck. Walsingham dead so soon after his greatest victory. Dee exiled to the north. Spain regaining its strength and still scheming, along with most of the other nations of Europe. Papists plotting our Queen’s death within our own shores. And now this plague, eating its way through the heart of our country. We have never been at a lower ebb. Where will it end?’

‘They say the Fair Folk are masters of bad luck.’ Launceston’s emotionless voice added an eerie weight to his words. ‘The Enemy that has tormented us for so long was always good at souring milk and breaking apart man and wife and destroying friendships by driving a wedge into the cracks caused by human weakness. Perhaps they are the invisible hand behind all our misery.’

Will was struck by the Earl’s words. Breaking the seal on the play, he flicked through the papers. No additions to the text leapt out at him, but he knew Kit would be more subtle than that.

Settling into his chair, with his boots on the table, he began to read the work while Carpenter and Launceston drank and dozed. Will was soon engrossed in the hubristic story of the scholar, Faustus, who had reached the limits of his studies and decided to devote himself to magic to continue his intellectual growth. Summoning the devil Mephistophilis, he makes a pact with Lucifer: twenty-four years of life on earth with the devil as his servant, and then he must give up his soul. The ending remained ambiguous: no evidence was found of Faustus’ fate, though the implication was that Lucifer had taken him to eternal damnation.

As he came to the end amid Carpenter’s growling snores, Will reflected on the content. His friend’s stories, like those of many writers, had more than one meaning, and what lay on the surface was not always the most important. Kit had spoken many times about how there was little difference between his work as a writer and his work as a spy – both roles required a convincing liar – and he had been sure it was one of the reasons he excelled at both, to his own self-loathing. There was a great deal in the story of Faustus that would have applied to Marlowe too, Will decided. One statement by Mephistophilis, describing hell, struck him particularly:

Hell hath no limits, nor is circumscribed,

In one self place, but where we are is hell,

And where hell is there must we ever be.

And to be short, when all the world dissolves,

And every creature shall be purified,

All places shall be hell that is not heaven.

Hell is in the minds of everyone, Mephistophilis appeared to be saying, and not a physical location. We make our own hells, Will thought, or have them thrust upon us. He considered the thing that had taken the form of Jenny and wondered if he would see it again.

The sheaf of papers was Marlowe’s original script, covered with blottings, scribblings, annotation and rings of dried wine. Some sections had been obliterated with furious strokes of the quill, and new lines written nearby. Mephistophilis’ description of hell was one of them, and Will wondered if Kit had changed it only recently, as matters came to light. If there were clues hidden within, it would take time to decipher them, and if he knew his friend’s mercurial mind, some clues might well be hidden in the symbolic nature of the text and the meaning might never be fully understood.

The truth lies within, but seek the source of the lies without.

What did Marlowe mean by the last part of his infuriatingly cryptic advice? Frustrated, Will retied the string.

A sharp knock at the door made all three of them jerk alert. Launceston was at the entrance in a flash, his knife ready. ‘Who goes?’ he growled.

‘Will? Are you in there?’

The pale-faced man relaxed. ‘Your assistant.’

At Will’s nod, the Earl opened the door and a breathless Nathaniel darted in. ‘I have run all the way from the river,’ he gasped. ‘I did as you asked, and spent the evening with the watermen listening to the gossip from the city.’ He doubled up, one hand on his knee, as he caught his breath. ‘You were right to fear poor Kit’s death was not the end of it. One of Sir Robert Cecil’s advisers came across the water in such a state I thought he would pull out his hair in a fit. He demanded a horse to ride to Nonsuch immediately to tell your master the news.’

‘Which is?’ Will asked, growing cold.

‘Another spy has been murdered, and in a manner that would give a grown man nightmares.’