The English Agent Read online

  Leonora glanced once at Marlowe, then sighed.

  “I am to say, ‘Hail, snow, and lightning all at once.’”

  Marlowe had no time to consider his response. He simply gasped.

  Lopez shook his head. “This is a line from your very bad play,” he said. “How would Walsingham—”

  “I have no idea,” Marlowe whispered. “That sad spectacle in The Pickerel was the only time it’s been read aloud.”

  “Then how could these words be contained in this missive?” Lopez turned to Leonora. “Who told you to say them?”

  “The man who delivered this cylinder,” she answered hesitantly.

  “Perhaps Walsingham does, indeed, have some mystic power,” Marlowe said.

  “I—I took it to mean,” Leonora intervened, not at all timidly, “that the current state of affairs is so grave—a tempest of horrible proportions. Is that not—”

  “I take it to mean,” Lopez countered, “that Walsingham has spies who spy on spies. That he somehow harvested a phrase from our young poet’s work that only he would know.”

  “Except that you knew it as well,” Leonora corrected.

  “Fortune placed me there,” he answered. “The phrase was meant for Marlowe.”

  “Why,” Marlowe managed to say, “would he want this woman to go with me to Delft?”

  “I am well-trained,” she answered testily.

  “A well-trained barmaid is hardly a match for Her Majesty’s agent!”

  Leonora produced a knife from somewhere under her dress, turned around once, and was suddenly behind Marlowe’s chair, the blade of her knife at his gullet.

  “Have a care what you say to me,” she concluded.

  Marlowe smiled. “I might say the same to you.”

  She felt a slight pinch in her belly, looked down, and found Marlowe’s dagger poised to stab her.

  “I don’t know who trained you,” he said, “but I learned from Dr. Lopez. He is the world’s finest physician, because he knows every way, in heaven or hell, to kill a man.”

  “As luck would have it,” she said softly, “I am no man.”

  Her blade was gone in the next instant. Marlowe found himself tantalized by the thought of where she might have it hidden.

  “Are you both finished?” Lopez sighed. “There is a final item in Walsingham’s note.”

  Leonora sat. Marlowe put away his blade.

  “‘We are certain,’” Lopez read, “‘that foreign agents follow you, bent on preventing you from protecting William. If possible, dispatch these agents.’”

  “The clergyman,” Marlowe said. “Done.”

  Lopez rolled the letter in his hands. “I wonder.”

  “Yes,” Leonora agreed, “that was very—obvious. And very easy.”

  “What about the nervous boy in the corner?” Marlowe ventured.

  Leonora sighed. “That’s Davey. He’s come every day this month to ask for my hand in marriage. He seems not to understand the word never.”

  “He works in the stables, does he not?” Lopez asked.

  “How did you know?” She stared.

  “His dress,” Marlowe answered, “his hands, and—well, his smell.”

  “Indeed,” she sighed again.

  “The man with the pipe,” Marlowe went on, “the baker, my surmise is that he is a baker.”

  “He is,” Leonora answered. “He’s a fine, gentle man, sweet humored, without enemy. He’s not our man.”

  “Then the clergyman is our only foe,” Marlowe insisted, “and he’s done.”

  “He’s not dead, is he?” Lopez asked.

  “I think not,” Marlowe answered. “But he’s in no shape to cause any trouble at this point.”

  “You’ve forgotten the traveling couple, the two dining in the far corner,” Leonora pointed out.

  “Those two?” Marlowe laughed.

  “I’ve seen them here before,” she went on, “and they were watching everything you did from the moment you came in.”

  Marlowe paused to think.

  As he did, he took an extra moment for a first real look at Leonora Beak. Her hair, slightly red, was pulled back severely. Her face was stern, but her dark eyes were lively. Her green dress was well laundered and her hands, though small, were not delicate. She was short, and could not have weighed much. Still, Marlowe had the impression that, when cornered, ferocity would make up for size. Walsingham had chosen her. There was clearly something to the girl.

  “Staring at me,” Leonora said suddenly to Marlowe, “will not help you to determine anything about that couple in the other room.”

  “Well.” Marlowe stood. “Let’s go ask them, then.”

  Leonora smiled. “Yes. Let’s.”

  “Marlowe, would you precede us,” Lopez directed. “I need to hear the final instruction from Walsingham, the verbal message our hostess is to impart. For my ears only.”

  “Ah, yes,” she said. “Mr. Marlowe, would you mind?”

  Without another word, Marlowe left the kitchen.

  He discovered a nightmare on the other side of the door.

  The old woman cook, Mrs. Pennington, lay lifeless on the floor, her face and clothing soaked in blood. The barman, Leonora’s father, was in the corner, trying to sit up, gasping. Davey, the sad stable boy, was seated sedately at his table, eyes wide, his forearm slit and pouring blood like a fountain.

  The clergyman, the couple, and the baker were all gone.

  “Lopez!” Marlowe howled.

  The doctor appeared in the doorway an instant later. He surveyed the bloody scene. Leonora burst through the door and shoved past Marlowe, flying to her father. The doctor followed, bending over the wounded man.

  “He’s alive,” Lopez assured her softly.

  “They’ve killed Mrs. Pennington,” the father moaned. “And Davey too!”

  “Hush, father,” Leonora implored him. “Let the doctor do his work.”

  Lopez turned toward Marlowe.

  “They can’t have gone far, whoever did this,” Lopez snapped. “After them!”

  Marlowe leapt forward at once, over Mrs. Pennington’s dead body, and burst through the front door of the Bell.

  The sun was nearly gone; the horizon was red. He looked first left, then right, but the road was empty, but the mud to the left of the door marked the direction of the tracks.

  “Horses!” Leonora shrieked from right behind Marlowe.

  She raced toward the barn, hiking her skirt up to reveal leather breeches and knee-high boots, and a small pouch at her waist.

  Marlowe ran after her.

  The boy who had taken the horses was standing in front of the barn. He had a look of utter madness on his face.

  “They took them,” he squeaked. “Your horses. Gone.”

  Marlowe was nearly at the boy’s side before he saw the spot of blood on the boy’s shoulder.

  “Are you wounded?” he asked the boy.

  The boy looked down at his shirt. “That woman stabbed me,” he said in shocked wonder. “For no reason.”

  “Can you make it to the inn?” Marlowe asked

  He nodded, face still contorted in pain.

  “There’s a doctor there,” Marlowe went on. “Go now. Show him your wound. You’ll be fine.”

  The boy nodded but didn’t move.

  “Which one of them stabbed you?” Leonora demanded.

  “The woman,” he answered, mystified. “With a tiny rapier no bigger than a fire poker.”

  “Go!” Marlowe commanded.

  This time the boy agreed, and stumbled toward the Bell.

  Leonora was already in the stable.

  “Damn!” she growled. “Your horses are gone, yours and the doctor’s!”

  “You have other horses, surely,” Marlowe snapped. “This is a changing station.”

  “Yes.” She glanced across the fields in the darkening landscape. “There!”

  Marlowe could barely make out another barn nearly hidden by large trees.
r />   “Good,” he said.

  Minutes later they had two horses out of the barn, into the evening air.

  “But which way?” Leonora asked as they neared the road.

  “I saw the hoofprints,” Marlowe answered, heading east. “They’re making for the sea.”

  Marlowe slowed his horse for an instant, considering that he ought to be off to Delft instead of chasing after these phantasms. But Leonora was already down the road, on fire, and nothing could turn her back.

  THREE

  Past midnight, Marlowe spotted a small fire not a hundred yards down the road in front of him. It was a well-traveled thoroughfare, lined with trees and shrubs. On either side there were wide-ranging fields, some wild, others filled with wheat, oats, barley. But the night was so dark that it was impossible to see very far. The second Marlowe noticed the flame, he encouraged his horse to flank Leonora’s and then touched her arm.

  “There,” he said as softly as he could. “Fire.”

  She slowed her horse.

  “Might not be our assassins,” Marlowe allowed, “but the better effort lies in caution.”

  Leonora actually growled, but she seemed to agree and stopped her horse completely. Marlowe slowed his horse and dismounted, dagger in hand.

  There was only the sliver of a moon, and an intermittent shadow of clouds moved constantly overhead, obscuring most of the stars.

  “I don’t know why we’re stopping,” Leonora complained. “The assassins would not have stopped by the side of the road over a cooking fire!”

  “Sh,” Marlowe insisted. “What if they’ve left behind the clergyman or the baker to stop anyone who might pursue them?”

  “Not the baker, I’d vouch for him with my life,” she answered, “but the man you refer to as a clergyman is a stranger to me.”

  “The high-born couple?” he mumbled. “You think they’re the Spanish agents? And they were sent to murder the doctor and me?”

  “Or me and my father.” Her voice betrayed a tension.

  Marlowe took in a short breath. “Do not worry about your father. I know that Dr. Lopez will mend him.”

  “Yes, better to spend my efforts on the vermin ahead,” she told him, “rather than the worry behind.”

  “So. I’ll go see whose fire that is.” Marlowe headed out.

  An instant later he found that Leonora was right beside him.

  “I was thinking that you’d wait with the horses,” he said very softly.

  “And I was thinking that you need my help more than the horses do.” She moved ahead.

  Moments later they were crouched behind a hawthorn bush, straining to see who was gathered around the fire only ten yards away. Even in the light of the dancing flames, it was nearly impossible to discern any recognizable face.

  “Looks like the couple,” Leonora whispered, her lips touching Marlowe’s ear. “That doesn’t make sense.”

  Trying not to react to the touch of her lips, Marlowe squinted, straining to see faces. He failed—at both efforts.

  “Let’s find out for certain,” he said after a moment.

  With that he stood, holding his dagger in front of him, and walked quickly toward the fire.

  “A very good even friends,” he cried out, adopting a somewhat foppish, drunken manner of speech, “and well met!”

  All faces looked his way. They were, it appeared, a young family: father, mother, and boy child. The man was wrapped in a tattered rustic cloak. The woman clutched a thick shawl around her shoulders. The boy, not more than seven or eight years old, shivered in rags. Their faces were ruddy and the woman had been crying.

  As Marlowe drew nearer he could see a small cart close by, and realized by the decoration on it that these were Traveling People, most likely from lowland Scotland by the look of their clothing.

  The man said something to the woman in a language Marlowe didn’t recognize, though it was vaguely Pictish, or Erse. Then he looked directly at Marlowe, his face hard.

  “We’ve naught to share, and less to steal,” he said in a coarse accent. “You’d best be off.”

  From the other side of them, Leonora spoke up. “We may have something to offer you, then.”

  The man was startled. The woman cried out and clutched the child. Marlowe had no idea how she’d managed to get into her position, but it did seem clever, made the family feel surrounded.

  “You’re free born of the Traveling People, am I correct?” Leonora went on.

  The man nodded once.

  “Then you see things that other people do not.” Leonora took a step closer.

  The man raised his arm. Marlowe moved faster, and tossed his knife, hilt first. He knocked a short dagger out of the Gypsy’s hand. Before the man could recover, Marlowe had his rapier out and was closing in on the family. The woman shrieked.

  “Stop!” Leonora commanded.

  Everyone froze.

  “I say we have something we would like to give you,” she repeated to the Gypsies softly, “in return for your observations.”

  “What would you give us?” the man asked defiantly.

  Leonora kept a steady bead on the man. “You have no horse to draw your cart; someone has taken it. That makes for difficult traveling. I’ll give you mine.”

  The Gypsy and Marlowe asked the same question at the same time.

  “What?”

  Leonora remained steady. “I said you have no horse now, but you did have until recently. We’re looking for the people who took it.”

  The man looked back at Marlowe. “Is she mad or a witch?”

  “Are those my only two choices?” Marlowe asked in return.

  “Someone took your horse,” Leonora insisted loudly. “I’m offering to give you one. Do you want it or not?”

  “What’s the price?” the Gypsy asked.

  “I’ve already told you,” she answered. “Either you are ignorant, in which case my friend will just kill you, or you’re deliberately playing at ignorance, in which case my friend will kill your wife and child, and then kill you. Which is it? Quickly!”

  Marlowe took his cue, moved forward, the point of his rapier near the woman’s heart. She began to sob.

  “Two well-born and another,” the Gypsy answered loudly. “They held us at pistol point and took horse and food, left us here.”

  “How long ago?”

  “Not the half of an hour,” he lamented. “I wanted to give chase, but…”

  The man slowly opened his cloak to reveal a deep wound in his right thigh.

  “Ah.” Leonora moved so quickly that everyone was startled.

  She flew to the man’s side, retrieved several vials of liquid from the pouch at her waist and went immediately to work on the man’s wound. The first she poured caused him to wince and twitch.

  “Hold still!” she commanded.

  “A witch, then,” he said to Marlowe, eyes rolling.

  Without a word, Leonora then sprinkled a bit of powder on the wound. Then she produced a long scrap of white linen and bound the wound.

  The entire ministration took fewer than sixty seconds.

  The man exhaled. “Well. That—that’s much better.”

  The woman said something in the other language, and the man nodded.

  “Thanks be to you, ma’am,” she said to Leonora, her accent so heavy it was difficult to understand her.

  “Now.” Leonora stood. “My horse.”

  “Wait,” Marlowe intervened.

  “There were three, he said,” Leonora told Marlowe impatiently. “That would be the couple and the so-called clergyman whom you wounded.”

  “Yes, but,” Marlowe began.

  “They only stole two horses from the Bell,” she interrupted, “so they’ve obviously been riding double—the couple I assume. They had to take the horse from these people to move more quickly.”

  “So why give away your horse now?” Marlowe complained.

  Leonora looked down at the family.

  “I shall give yo
u my horse on the condition that you take it up the road to the Bell Inn, do you know it?”

  The man nodded.

  “My father owns it. He’ll recognize the horse. You’ll tell him I sent you, Leonora Beak sent you, and you’ll be taken care of. Do you understand?”

  “No,” the man admitted. “I don’t.”

  “I have heard that the Traveling People of the Scottish lowlands abhor a debt,” she said.

  “It’s true,” he admitted skeptically.

  “And if I give you my horse,” she went on, “and my father takes care of you and your family until you are well enough to move on, you’ll be mightily in my debt, is this not so?”

  “Aye,” he sighed. “It would be a fearsome burden to me.”

  “And that’s the price,” she said, a bit triumphantly. “You’ll be in my debt and you’ll come to my aide for as long as I say until I release you.”

  The man looked at Marlowe, then back at Leonora. “I don’t know. What is it you’re likely to be wanting of me?”

  “We are bound for the Netherlands,” she said plainly, “where there is an abundance of Travelers similar to you and your family, like-minded cousins, shall we say, who are sometime known at Egyptians or Heidens. Am I correct?”

  The man paused, then nodded once, uncertain what Leonora was getting at.

  “And they are often accused of being spies for the Turks,” she continued, “and therefore hounded by those in authority, generally treated poorly.”

  “Aye,” the man assented, albeit warily.

  “Then this is what I ask: that you establish for us, me and my friend, a network of support and communication in that other country, and in this one.” She lowered her voice. “I know you can do this. News and gossip move faster through your camps than a peregrine falcon can fly.”

  “It’s true,” he said, grudgingly, “but you ask for too much. We keep to ourselves, the Traveling People.”

  Leonora shook her head. “I’m not asking for anything but eyes and ears. No action on anyone’s part. It’s not very much payment for the lives of you and your family.”

  “And a very nice horse,” Marlowe added, grumbling.

  At that Leonora made a clicking noise, something not quite human, and her horse trotted quickly to her side.