The English Agent Read online

  “This is Bess. She’s tired. Let her rest. Take her to the Bell Inn at dawn. There will be food, warmth, and a doctor.”

  “The alternative is that we leave you as we found you,” Marlowe said. “Traveling People without horse, food, or weapon. What do you think your chances are there?”

  The woman said something. The man nodded, then stood.

  “We are in your debt,” he said stiffly. “My name is Gelis. Might I know yours?”

  “I am Leonora Beak,” she answered, “and my friend is—”

  “Robert Greene,” Marlowe interrupted quickly.

  Whatever else Marlowe had learned from Walsingham, he knew better than to give out his true name to strangers. He was surprised that Leonora had done so.

  Gelis nodded in an imitation of subservience.

  “Good, then,” Leonora said briskly.

  “What can you tell us about the people who attacked you?” Marlowe asked immediately.

  “As I say,” Gelis began, “two men and a woman, and the woman was the worst. Had a pistol. She’s what shot me.”

  “What kind of pistol?” Marlowe asked.

  “Wheel-lock,” he answered.

  Not the latest model, but spectacularly effective at close range, a wheel-lock worked by spinning a spring-loaded steel wheel against a piece of pyrite to produce the spark that would ignite the gunpowder and fire the shot. It was a weapon that could be ready in an instant and fired with one hand. It was also an expensive weapon, implying that its owner would be wealthy. Marlowe felt quite pleased with himself that he had discovered a great deal about the trio he and Leonora were perusing simply by asking the right question.

  Leonora preferred a more direct interrogation.

  “Did they say anything important to our pursuit?” she asked.

  Gelis took a breath. “The gentleman who appeared to be her husband said not to bother with me and the missus because they had to be in Maldon before dawn.”

  “Maldon,” she repeated.

  Marlowe’s eyes narrowed. “They’re on their way to kill William. They’ll find a ship in Maldon that will take them to Delft.”

  Leonora’s face darkened. “I fear you are correct. We must be on our way at once.”

  Marlowe glared at Gelis and his family.

  “I take you on your honor,” he said harshly. “You will send out word; your brethren will come to our aid. And you will make no mention of this to anyone. Or when I’m done with my business, I’ll see to you.”

  Gelis smiled. “If you can find me.”

  “I take you at your word without threats,” Leonora intervened. “You will help us and keep silent because I have given you a horse and shelter, and because that is the sort of man you are.”

  Gelis looked down. “Alas, yes.”

  His wife said something again, and he looked at her and smiled.

  “And I am reminded,” he said, “to be grateful when a stranger does me a good turn.”

  Leonora smiled. “We’ll be off, then.”

  She took her horse, Bess, by the reins and patted her once on the neck. Gelis took the reins from her, and she hurried toward Marlowe.

  “Now.” She brushed past him running toward his horse.

  “Wait,” Marlowe called out.

  But Leonora was already mounted and shaking the reins impatiently.

  “We have no time to lose,” she muttered. “We can’t let them get on that ship.”

  “I agree,” he sighed, “but you’ve hampered our ability in that regard by giving away your horse.”

  “It was a good decision,” she said sternly.

  “Well at the very least, slide back,” he insisted. “I’ll be in the saddle.”

  She shook her head. “I know the way to Maldon better than you.”

  “It’s my horse,” he countered.

  “In point of fact,” she snapped, “this horse belongs to my father. The assassins stole your horse.”

  “You gave away the horse you were riding on,” Marlowe said, his voice louder, “so get off or slide back!”

  “Are we seriously going to argue about this while the villains gain advantage?” Her voice was also louder, and becoming shrill.

  “Are you seriously going to let them go just because you want to ride in front?”

  “Yes!” Leonora screamed so violently that the horse reared up, nearly tossing her onto the ground.

  “You see?” Marlowe yelled. “Even the animal wants you to move!”

  Without further discourse, Marlowe shoved his left boot into the empty stirrup and threw himself upward, into the saddle. The combination of the horse’s motion and Marlowe’s bulk forced Leonora out of the saddle and onto the horse’s backside.

  In the next second Marlowe had slapped the reins and the horse took off down the road in the direction of Maldon.

  “You’ll kill us both,” Leonora shouted.

  “Why in the name of Christ did you give your horse to that man?” Marlowe demanded.

  “Now we have eyes and ears in the Netherlands!” she answered.

  “The Heidens? Are you seriously suggesting—?”

  “Go faster,” she interrupted again. “We can’t let them get on that ship!”

  “Hold onto something, then,” Marlowe warned.

  He leaned forward, tapped the horse’s side with the heel of his boot, and the horse responded perfectly, nearly doubling his speed.

  Leonora’s reflex was to throw her arms around Marlowe’s chest and press her body to his back.

  FOUR

  All of Maldon was asleep by the time Christopher Marlowe and Leonora Beak caught first sight of it from the road. Not a single light could be seen, and the night air had acquired a slight chill.

  As they drew close to the few streets of the town, they could see the church built on the highest part of the hill. Once on the High Street, they could see down to the docks. Marlowe slowed the horse to a walk.

  “We’ve missed them,” Marlowe swore. “The ship’s gone.”

  “What makes you say that?” Leonora asked, staring toward the water.

  “Do you see any light down there?” he complained. “Their ship would have running lights for going down the river to the sea.”

  “Not if they were trying to go unnoticed.”

  “We wouldn’t have missed them,” Marlowe snapped, “if you hadn’t given your horse away.”

  “Would you stop going on about the horse,” she railed.

  “Sh!” Marlowe commanded.

  Some faint sound could be heard coming from below, around a corner, close to the black waterside. The sound of people whispering echoed in the night air on the water.

  Leonora put her lips on Marlowe’s ear.

  “Turn left at the church,” she breathed, “and into the first side street. Stables are there.”

  Marlowe nodded. Of course she would know where the stables of Maldon were located; they would be sister to the ones she and her father managed on the road. Without a sound Marlowe encouraged his horse in that direction.

  The Maldon stables were small and unattended. Marlowe dismounted and reached his hand up to help Leonora down, but she slid off with an agile grace, and without his aid.

  The inside of the barn was unusually clean for a travel stable. The two-story building, about a quarter the size of an estate stable, held ten stalls below and a hayloft above. The wood beams and stall dividers seemed relatively new. The smell of the place was uncommonly pleasant. Hay on the floor helped, but as Marlowe cast his eyes upward he could see that the rafters were hung with huge sheaves of lavender and rosemary, another touch not ordinarily found in public barns.

  Marlowe only spent another moment looking before he saw, in the nearest stalls, the horses that he and Lopez had ridden. They were still saddled, and quite wet. There was also, in the back of the barn, a third animal he presumed to be the one stolen from the Traveling family.

  Cursing under his breath he went to them immediately and began to tend on
e of the animals.

  “What are you doing?” Leonora asked softly. “We have to go down to the water.”

  “Not until these horses are taken care of,” he answered. “We won’t get very far if the horses fall sick.”

  “We’re not going to ride them across the ocean,” she groused. “We need a ship, not a horse!”

  “I’ll take these two,” Marlowe said, ignoring her objection. “You see to the others. They all need care.”

  She only paused for an instant before she nodded and went to work.

  Quiet as they were, their ministrations did not go undetected. Just as Marlowe had finished wiping down the second horse in his care, a man the size of a boulder rolled around a dark corner of the barn with a very serious pitchfork in his hands. The fact that he was only wearing a nightshirt did not diminish the obvious threat.

  “Leave off them beasties, my lad,” he growled, jabbing at Marlowe with the tines.

  Leonora appeared beside Marlowe instantly and brushed the offending implement aside.

  “Edwin!” she cried.

  “Leonora?” he responded, clearly surprised.

  “Since when do you put up animals like this?” she demanded of him. “Just you wait until I inform the other ostlers!”

  Edwin lowered his pitchfork.

  “Hang on a minute.” Edwin looked around. “Where’d all these horses come from?”

  “Well, that’s done it,” Marlowe railed. “If we’ve not awakened half the town, at least the villains have heard us now!”

  Before anyone could respond, a knife blade seared past Marlowe and stuck hard into the supporting beam beside him.

  Instantly Marlowe had his rapier and dagger out, and Leonora had ducked into a stall. Only Edwin seemed unable to move, which was unfortunate. A second knife hit him in his left side and down he went, howling.

  From the shadows two figures emerged, the couple from the Bell Inn, both armed. The man had a pistol in one hand and a claymore in the other; the woman had two daggers in one hand and some sort of iron rod in the other.

  Disarm the pistol first, Marlowe thought. Without another thought he lunged forward as if he were trying to stab the woman in the belly, but at the last second Marlowe dropped to the hay-strewn floor of the barn, rolled, and ended up jabbing his rapier into the man’s knee.

  The man stumbled; Marlowe rose. On his feet once more, he jumped quickly to one side. In a lightning pirouette he knocked the iron rod out of the woman’s hand and held his dagger to her throat.

  At that same moment Leonora reappeared with her hands clenched tightly in fists, as if she were going to thrash her attackers bare-knuckled.

  The man with the pistol took aim. Marlowe was faster, and flicked out the point of his rapier, slicing the back of the man’s hand. The pistol dropped, uncocked.

  Unfortunately, that slight distraction allowed the well-dressed woman to elbow Marlowe in the chest as she turned back and away from the knife at her neck. Marlowe, the breath momentarily knocked out of him, stumbled backward toward the wall.

  The woman got her balance, raised her arm, and threw one of her daggers into Marlowe’s sword arm.

  Or so it seemed, but Marlowe smiled. The knife had cut the loose fabric of his doublet and shirt, only grazed the flesh of his arm.

  Just as he was about to right himself and use his own dagger, Leonora came between him and the woman. With startling speed Leonora opened her fist and blew a fine dust from her hand directly into the woman’s face. The woman seemed, at first, only irritated, then surprised—but after a heartbeat or two, her eyes widened and her mouth contorted. She gasped, gargled, and began to stumble.

  Not waiting for any further effect, Leonora danced lightly around the woman and cast the powder in her other fist directly into their other assailant’s open mouth, just as if she were flinging a handful of ashes.

  The man gasped, choked, dropped his claymore, and began to foam at the mouth.

  Marlowe blinked.

  At the same time the woman fell down, shaking her head violently as if trying not to pass out.

  “Curious,” Leonora said primly. “She should already be dead by now.”

  Leonora strode to the woman on her knees and grabbed her by the hair.

  “Why aren’t you dead yet?” she asked the poor woman.

  The woman responded by producing another dagger from the folds of her dress and swiping it at Leonora. But Leonora was too quick. She jumped back. When she did, the woman’s hair came off in Leonora’s hand.

  The woman looked up and Marlowe tilted his head.

  Even in the dim, flickering torch light it was obvious: the woman was a man.

  What was more, Marlowe knew the face, it was familiar to him somehow. Leonora examined the wig.

  At length the boy in the dress fell backward, panting and gasping.

  “Well, that’s why you aren’t dead,” Leonora scolded, stepping over to look down at the person. “You were pretending to be a woman so I gave you a lesser application. Now you’re suffering. It’s your own fault. And, incidentally, did you kill Mrs. Pennington back at the Inn?”

  The boy croaked.

  Marlowe stepped in.

  “Is there any possibility,” he said calmly, “that I might question this person before he dies? If these are William’s assassins, then our job is done. Or at the very least this person could tell us where the third member of their alliance might be hiding.”

  “The clergyman, as you call him,” Leonora answered. “Yes, well.”

  From a pocket in her boot Leonora produced a stone vial with a cork stuck in it.

  “What’s that?” Marlowe asked, only idly curious.

  “Never carry a poison without its antidote,” she told him. “That’s a lesson I learned the hard way.”

  She pulled out the cork, stood over the dying boy in the dress, and spoke as if to a troublesome child.

  “Open your mouth if you want to live,” she said, staring directly into the boy’s eyes. “It’s of no consequence to me either way, but my friend would like to chat.”

  Gasping, beginning to convulse, the boy in the dress leaned forward and opened his mouth. It was a grotesque imitation of a baby bird wanting to be fed.

  “This should do the trick,” Leonora mumbled.

  She poured a thimbleful of viscous liquid into that maw, and the boy in the dress began to cough. He coughed for a full minute. Then he vomited so violently that he seemed in danger of losing internal organs.

  “Although,” Leonora confided to Marlowe, “some will tell you that the cure is worse than the poison.”

  “What in God’s name did you give the boy?” Marlowe asked.

  “Bark of mulberry boiled in vinegar, and rancid oil,” she responded happily.

  She reached into her pocket and produced a sturdy tin vial.

  “Take this,” she said, holding it out. “Never know when you might need it—for yourself or someone else.”

  Marlowe accepted the strange gift silently, and then turned his attention to the heaving actor at his feet.

  By the time the barn was silent once more, Leonora had tended to Edwin’s wound and verified that the man with the claymore was dead.

  Marlowe stood over the boy in the dress.

  “How are you feeling?” he asked without emotion.

  “Get,” the boy rasped, gasping to breathe, “stuffed.”

  “Good, then answer me this,” Marlowe continued briskly, “where is the other man, the one who was with you at the Bell Inn?”

  “Maybe,” the boy answered, still struggling, “you should look up your ass.”

  “Well,” Marlowe opined good-naturedly, “I would, but I have no reflecting glass, and, you understand, without one—”

  Without warning Leonora slid up beside the boy in the dress and brought down an iron rod on his back. The thud was bad, the crack was worse. The boy in the dress howled, vomited again, and began to cry.

  “I don’t have any idea what
you want from me,” he sobbed. “I don’t.”

  “We want,” Leonora began, “your cooperation.”

  “Did you break one of the bones in his back?” Marlowe asked.

  “Did sound like it,” she acquiesced.

  “Listen, friend,” Marlowe said to the boy in the dress, “I’m not used to this sort of thing. I’m a student, you understand. But this woman here? She has killed a dozen men since breakfast, and without so much a loss of breath or a quickened heart. So. Please tell us where the other man is.”

  “Docks,” the boy whimpered. “Waiting for our boat.”

  “Where were you bound?” Leonora asked, pitching her voice to match the lies that Marlowe had just told about her.

  The boy was still sobbing. “Netherlands. I think my back is broke.”

  Marlowe studied the dress he was wearing. “Exactly where did you get that dress? And whose idea was it that you should wear it?”

  “Done it before,” the boy said, breathing with difficulty. “Theatre.”

  Marlowe’s head snapped back a bit. “I thought I recognized you! You aren’t Ned Blank.”

  “I am,” the boy said, even managing a bit of pride at being recognized.

  Marlowe turned to Leonora. “This is Ned Blank!”

  “So he says,” she responded, utterly unimpressed.

  “No,” Marlowe went on with growing enthusiasm. “This boy was, only a short time ago, the greatest actor of female roles in all of London theatre!”

  Leonora stared down at the wreckage groveling on the floor of the barn. “This?”

  “I saw you play Ophelia,” Marlowe said to Ned, “in Kyd’s Hamlet; you were spectacular.”

  He turned to Leonora.

  “In the scene after Hamlet rapes Ophelia,” he said in hushed tones, “Ned, here, was able to make every single person in the audience weep, myself included.”

  The boy sat up straighter. “I did get good notices for that one.”

  “What the hell are you doing with these murderers?” Leonora demanded angrily.

  “Murderers?” Ned asked, blinking. “They said they was spies.”

  “What the hell are you doing with these spies, then?” Leonora asked immediately.