Silent Court (18 page)

Walsingham smiled. ‘I prefer men who can think on their feet while they are standing on somebody else’s.’

‘Good,’ Burghley said. ‘Good.’

‘I sent Faunt to him, but of course that was before recent events in Delft. I still intend Marlowe to go, but his brief is ever more desperate now.’

‘I don’t need the details.’ Burghley waved the man aside. ‘That’s what we pay you for. Come on, Walsingham, time for breakfast. We’ve braved this ghastly weather for long enough. The cold gets to my bones these days.’ He looked up at the turreted splendour of his house and the grey clouds building from the east. ‘What will it bring us, do you think, this new year of our Lord?’

Walsingham smiled. ‘I never think of that before the Christmas fires die. The Lord of Misrule has a habit of making a mess of things.’

‘He does.’ Burghley sighed. ‘He does indeed.’

It took Hern several hours to negotiate with the master of the
Antelope
to take his menagerie across the North Sea. There were the horses and the dogs, the two monkeys, the parrot and the snake. And then, there was the nature of the human cargo to be reckoned with. These people were Egyptians, weren’t they? On the run from something or other. The Master of the
Antelope
wasn’t a religious man. He followed the laws of God and Elizabeth when he could by attending church once a month, but everybody appreciated that running with the tides off Norfolk carried a schedule of its own and he couldn’t always arrange time with his Maker. So it didn’t matter to him whether his passengers were Egyptians, Calvinists, Lutherans, Papists or Anthropophagi with their faces in their chests; it was just a matter of cash, pure and simple. And everyone had his price.

Hern, on the other hand, had done this before too and he had a knack of getting discounts for this or that reason, even when the price of the crossing was fixed and there was no room for negotiation. There had even been one spectacular occasion when a particularly unwary Master had paid him for the privilege of transporting his people.

It was another grey day when the
Antelope
sailed, canvas tumbling in the raw wind and the ketch coming about to hug the Norfolk coast. All that first day they followed it, the Master tacking to take advantage of the wind as little fishing villages came and went.

‘Is this your first time in the Low Countries, Kit?’ Balthasar Gerard stood on the forecastle in the raw morning air, tugging his cloak around him against the weather.

‘It is,’ Marlowe told him. ‘You know it well, I suppose?’

‘I am a Frenchman,’ Gerard said, although his accent seemed universal, ‘but in my calling, I go anywhere. Everywhere.’

‘I have been impressed by what I have seen,’ Marlowe said, ‘but I still can’t see where the trickery ends and the real fortune-telling begins.’

‘As Hern told you,’ Gerard said, ‘when you can do that, you will truly be an Egyptian.’

‘Do you forget nothing you hear?’ Marlowe asked him. Hern had said that as a throwaway line, weeks before, when they were first on the road and before everything else had happened; Helene, Rose, all the bad things.

‘I remember everything,’ Gerard said, ‘in one part of me, my heart, my head, my guts. I am the only true teller of the future in this band, although other troupes have others. Not as good as me, I must say, in all modesty.’

‘So…’ Marlowe knew he must tread warily. ‘You knew about Rose and what would happen?’

‘Not in exact terms,’ Gerard said. ‘I try not to see my own future. What man could stand to do that? But I knew our time together would be short. Yes, I knew that.’

Marlowe pressed a little harder. The more he probed these people, the less he seemed to know. ‘So, although you knew she would kill Nell, you still took her to Ely?’

‘Did she kill Helene Dee?’ Gerard asked. ‘I am far from sure, but when I try to look, all is mist, turns and twists and I can see nothing.’

Marlowe was unimpressed. How often the fog came down when the soothsayer was forced to look into something he had not already arranged to happen and, the oddest thing of all, Balthasar had done nothing to save the girl. When he realized that Constable Sedgrave had her in his clutches, he just meekly let her go. ‘Couldn’t one of the others see into that part,’ he asked, ‘if you yourself can’t? Surely, you all have the skill of prophecy, to a greater or lesser degree? That’s what Hern says, at any rate.’

‘Hern speaks for Hern,’ Gerard said. ‘It is true that the children of the moon are as varied as the colours of the rainbow. They all have their skills.’

‘If you are the best, then,’ Marlowe said, ‘tell my fortune, soothsayer.’ And he pressed a groat into the man’s hand.

Balthasar Gerard looked into Marlowe’s eyes. ‘Are you sure?’ he asked. ‘I do not give readings to please the payer, except to the ignorant who couldn’t face the truth. You might not like what you hear.’

‘You have my money, Master Gerard,’ Marlowe said. ‘Time for your end of the bargain.’

The Egyptian held up his hand. ‘Remember,’ he said, ‘I am only Balthasar. We have no surnames here. Our pasts are behind us. We have only the present and the future. Today and tomorrow.’

‘So be it,’ Marlowe said.

The soothsayer took a deep breath and held Marlowe’s hand flat, palm uppermost. He looked up into his face for a moment. ‘There is greatness here,’ he said. ‘You will be remembered for all eternity.’

Marlowe laughed. ‘I’m flattered,’ he said, when he realized that Balthasar wasn’t smiling. ‘Go on. How shall I be remembered?’

‘A line,’ the other continued, tracing the lines in Marlowe’s palm. ‘A mighty line. There is a thump, a rhythm. I cannot describe it. No one has heard it before, but others will claim it as their own.’ He suddenly faltered. ‘I see blood,’ he said, ‘much blood. Paris. Do you know Paris, Kit?’

The scholar gypsy shook his head.

A strange look flickered across the grey face of Balthasar Gerard. ‘Near the bed,’ he said, in a voice that didn’t sound like his own.

‘What?’ Marlowe didn’t understand.

‘There is a place,’ Balthasar said, speaking slowly, tasting each word for sense as it left his mouth and finding little, ‘a place where great ships come, some in pieces. There is…’ he shut his eyes tight, his grip firmer on Marlowe’s hand, ‘a stream, a raven.’ He opened his eyes suddenly. ‘Does any of this make sense to you?’ he asked.

Marlowe shook his head again.

Balthasar let his hand drop. ‘That is where you will die, Kit,’ he said, solemnly, ‘where the great ships lie, by the raven’s stream.’

‘Near the bed!’ Marlowe reminded him, smiling.

The Egyptian smiled too, the dread moment gone. ‘You don’t believe me.’

Marlowe slapped the wooden rail that ran around the
Antelope
’s deck. ‘I believe in this –’ he reached out to the rough hemp of the rigging – ‘and this. What I can see and smell, taste and feel.’

‘Liar!’ Balthasar Gerard laughed at him. ‘You are a dreamer, Kit, a poet. When I heard your tale of the Queen of Carthage, I knew that. You and I are both children of the moon in our different ways.’

‘Are we?’ Marlowe asked. ‘Well, then –’ he turned his face into the wind of the North Sea – ‘amen to that.’

Night found the
Antelope
butting through the breakers, her compass holding as she ploughed south-southeast. Kit Marlowe was asleep in his bunk at the stern when he heard it, a low chanting like a dream from his childhood. For a moment, he was back in Canterbury, jumping the puddles in the cobbles as he ran to school, past St George’s Church and on into Mercery Lane, with his old friends Henry Bromerick, Tom Colwell, Matty Parker. He heard the bells of the cathedral clash and call, prisoners in their great stone towers and he heard the hiss of the cane as a scholar stumbled late under the Dark Entry that led from the cloisters; Master Greshop flexing his muscles.

Slowly, his dream faded and he was aware of his surroundings. Above him the timbers of the deck were black with pitch and the beams were thick and knotted to his left. The bunk was narrow, a makeshift bed wedged between the frames and the horse hair pillow flat and unyielding. He popped his head over the side to where Balthasar Gerard snored softly in the bunk below. Across the narrow aisle where the night lamp swung, its tallow candle spent, he could make out the shape of Hern on the top bunk opposite his and Frederico on the bed below.

‘Near the bed.’ Balthasar’s incomprehensible words moaned in his head with the roll and roar of the sea and the creaking of the timbers. He propped himself up on one elbow. There was no mistaking it. He wasn’t dreaming now. It was a paternoster, half sung, half whispered, and in Latin. It had been a long time since he had heard this, the prayer of hope but in the language of the damned.

As silently as a shadow, Marlowe hauled on his breeches and slipped his dagger into the belt at his back. Then he slid off the bunk, landing on bare feet and padded his way towards the bow. The swell caught him as he reached the galley and he steadied himself, hissing an oath as he nearly fell. He passed the bunks of the women, their hung dresses swaying in the ship’s movement like ghosts. He recognized the cherub face of little Starshine who wanted nothing but stories about cats. She lay cradled in her mother’s arms, this child of the moon, dreaming of who knew what.

Still the prayers called Marlowe on, drawing him deeper and darker into the bowels of the ship. The stench from the animal deck was grim, ammonia reeking from the straw in which the horses slept standing up. He gripped the rope rail and went down, where the bilge water rolled with each sway and lapped over the keel timbers with each thud of the breakers on the bows. There was a faint light ahead, blue and secret and he followed it, like the wise men and their star. Three people knelt in prayer in the circle of light, in that makeshift stable between the bales of wool and barrels of ale. Two women who Marlowe had only seen in passing amongst the other passengers, eyes closed, their mouths moving in silent adoration. Simon was the third, the Greek who was really a Portuguese, or some such complicated genealogy. He was speaking in Latin now, the words of the Mass long outlawed in England wherever good Christian men met.

Simon’s eyes flew open and he dropped the Bible and the chalice, both thudding to the bilge-wet deck, the goblet rolling away to the rats’ nests in the corner. The women opened their eyes too and crossed themselves, gasping as they saw Marlowe standing there, watching them. His finger flew to his lips, ‘Calm yourselves,’ he said softly, ‘we are at sea. The Queen’s writ cannot reach you here.’

Simon retrieved his Bible, made the sign of the cross over the frightened women and sent them on their way. They bobbed past Marlowe, anxious to be gone, back to their beds, back to the dark.

‘So, you know,’ Simon said, kissing his rosary and folding it away into his robes.

‘I had my suspicions,’ Marlowe said, ‘Ever since Ely. An Egyptian who doesn’t speak the language, a juggler who doesn’t juggle, a card sharp who doesn’t touch the devil’s pictures.’

‘Are you hunting me?’ Simon asked.

Marlowe chuckled and helped the man to his feet. ‘You flatter yourself, Master Jesuit,’ he said. ‘As our brethren in the crew might say, I still have other fish to fry.’

‘So I am safe?’ Simon asked, more for the sake of the women than himself.

‘Simon, we are rolling about on a widow-maker full fathom five in a boat made of pieces of wood tied together with rope and canvas. How safe we are is anybody’s guess.’

‘We are in God’s hands,’ Simon assured him.

‘That’s a comfort,’ Marlowe said. The priest made to brush past him, but Marlowe placed a hand on his chest. ‘Not so fast.’ He smiled. ‘I know some Puritans who would have slit your throat by now for what they’ve seen and heard tonight. The fact that I’m letting you live means a few words of explanation are owed to me, I think.
Quid pro quo
, Father.’

The priest smiled. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘But I must have your word that those women will not be harmed. They are of the true faith. I offered them succour. Why is that a burning offence?’

Marlowe laughed. ‘It is not for us to debate the temper of the times, sir,’ he said. ‘We are survivors, you and I, each in his own way. Tell me how you survived.’

To his dying day, Simon never knew why he told Kit Marlowe the truth. There was something about the man, the deep, dark eyes, the soft mouth set in the hard jaw. Something about him which hinted that he already knew and was just seeking confirmation.

‘My name is not Simon,’ the priest said, sitting on a bale of wool, greasy and smelling of sheep and ancient hay. ‘It’s Father Belasius. I am from Oporto, from the Jesuit College there.’

‘And are you part of Campion’s mission in England?’

Both men knew the story of Edmund Campion, the Protestant who had joined the scorpion’s nest at Douai and kissed the Pope’s arse before bringing the Papist word back to England. It was the talk of every tavern in Cambridge when they broke the man on the rack and hanged and quartered him at Tyburn.

‘That man went his own way,’ Belasius said. ‘I am not made of the stuff of martyrs.’

‘Remarkable you’ve survived so long, though,’ Marlowe said.

‘Circumspection.’ Belasius shrugged. ‘I have had to be careful. My guard was down tonight. You caught me in a weak moment, Master Marlowe.’

‘We all have those.’ Kit nodded. ‘Happily not when you were throwing me into the air.’

‘That trick only worked the once.’ The priest smiled. ‘You always led off the wrong foot.’

‘We’ll do better in Delft,’ his tumbling partner said, ‘assuming you will still be with us.’

Belasius shrugged, then looked at him seriously. ‘Tell me about the other fish you have to fry – what are they?’

Marlowe looked at the man, long and hard. Circumspection was his middle name too and bobbing about on the North Sea where only God commands and no man’s laws held sway would not let him relax his guard for one moment. ‘Ask the fortune teller,’ he said, springing to his feet. ‘Ask Balthasar Gerard.’

All that last day at sea, the Master of the
Antelope
kept a watchful eye and his iron fowler primed on the aft castle. The whole stretch of coast from the Zuyder Zee to the Scheldt was the domain of the sea beggars, Dutch patriots who cut a man’s purse strings while cutting his throat and asking his race and religion afterwards. He breathed a sigh of relief as the Hook of Holland lay grey in the morning mist and that danger, at least, was past.