The English Agent Read online

  She started to speak, then held her breath.

  “Yes,” Marlowe went on. “You see the problem. How could those words have gotten into the missive from Walsingham?”

  “Is it possible that someone read the manuscript some days earlier?”

  “Possible,” he admitted, “but not likely. Only one or two others have ever seen the lines.”

  “Then—what?”

  “I don’t know, that’s just it.” Marlowe stood and began to pace. “None of this is right: the Traveling Scots we met on the road, the fact that Ned Blank, one of our premiere London actors, is somehow involved, the murder of your cook back at the Bell. It’s all too sloppy. Deliberately so.”

  “Deliberately? You mean that someone is trying to obscure the waters of the larger plot.”

  “Yes.” Marlowe took in a short breath. “I’m beginning to agree that there is more to all this than an assassination of this Dutch prince. He isn’t to be murdered in order to make it easier for Spanish invasion troops to assemble. They’re already gathered, waiting. Someone wanted us to be distracted from that.”

  “And when you say us, you mean?”

  “Lopez, me, you, Walsingham, the Queen.”

  “Well if you’re right,” she said, “we’re not just distracted. They wanted us out of the country. Out of England.”

  “This is all a ruse!” Marlowe’s voice rose. “There is no plot on William’s life! We have to get back to England!”

  At that exact moment three pistol shots rang out from inside the prince’s home.

  Shock seized Marlowe, but it did not prevent him from drawing his rapier and barging into the home. He could smell the gunpowder, and hear voices shouting, crying.

  He rushed toward the noise, Leonora running at his side. They quickly found a glut of men and women gathered at the bottom of the stairs. In the middle lay a dead man, blood bubbling from two holes in his chest. On the stairway wall, just above, he saw two smoking holes that could only have come from gunshot.

  “God in Heaven,” Marlowe swore.

  The man in the lion tunic stood over the corpse, weeping. He looked up at Marlowe.

  “William the Silent is dead.” His voice grated.

  The prince lay in a woman’s arms. Her face was covered in tears.

  “Where is the assassin?” Marlowe demanded.

  Five or six arms raised, fingers all pointing in the same direction, toward the back of the house.

  Without another word, Marlowe raced in that direction, drawing his dagger in addition to the rapier in his right hand. He could hear Leonora behind him as she knelt beside the dead man, muttering some words of comfort and asking several questions. But a moment later he was out of earshot and his own heart’s blood was pounding in his ears.

  Around a corner and past several rooms, a door to the outside stood open.

  Marlowe raged through it, growling. He did not bother to look which way the murderer had run. He knew it would be toward the more populated streets of the city, toward the church.

  As he barged down a narrow way he suddenly caught sight of the villain up ahead, running toward the ramparts. With a start Marlowe noticed a pig’s bladder around the assassin’s waist. The man was going to ascend the ramparts and plunge into the moat, using the bladder as a float.

  Gasping for breath, his lungs burning, his side screaming, Marlowe began to gain on the man. Several pounding heartbeats later, the man flung himself forward. Marlowe thought he was attempting to leap onto the ramparts.

  A moment later it was clear that the murderer had stumbled over a rubbish heap and had crashed to the ground.

  Marlowe sheathed his rapier and was on top of the man at once. He grabbed the man by the throat and held the point of his knife at the man’s left eye.

  “Traitor,” Marlowe snarled. “Coward.”

  “I am no traitor, Monsieur,” he gasped, “I am a patriot.”

  “A patriot?”

  “In the service of my master, the King of Spain!”

  An instant later several other men appeared. Screaming, they tore the assassin from Marlowe’s grasp and began beating him. Fists, boots, the butt of a sword, all rained down on the demon. Marlowe swallowed, catching his breath, and was about to question the killer. But the gang began to drag the Frenchman back toward the house, still beating him mercilessly.

  “Wait,” Marlowe called. “I need to question that man!”

  Perhaps they did not hear him for all their shouted curses, perhaps they did not understand English; they may have simply ignored him in the rage of the moment.

  It didn’t really matter. William the Silent was dead. Marlowe had failed.

  * * *

  The assassin’s name was Balthasar Gérard. Soon after Marlowe’s repeated attempts to question him were ignored, city magistrates appeared. They began a feverish examination, more inquisition than trial.

  Gérard, unrepentant, almost glowing, oiled each response.

  “I have been planning this holy act since March,” he concluded. “I, like David, have slain Goliath!”

  Obviously mad, the Frenchman went on: singing snatches of old tunes, as one incapable of knowing his own distress.

  Stopping the assassin in the middle of a sentence, a little man in grand purple, a hat that cost more than everyone else’s boots, and a belly like a pregnant sow, shot up. Pointing his finger at the Frenchman he declared: “Balthasar Gérard, you shall be taken out of this house and tortured for two days. Then you shall be brought into a public place where your right hand, that which slew our great prince, will be burned off with a red-hot iron. Then flesh will be ripped from your bones with pincers, after which your limbs will be torn from your body, all four. You will be disemboweled alive and live as long as you may in that condition. Thereafter, before you are dead, your heart will be gouged from your chest and flung into your face, and your head will be cut of and served to dogs.”

  Gérard nodded. That was all.

  * * *

  Marlowe kept insisting, in the Queen’s name, that he be allowed to question Gérard. It was clear to Marlowe that William’s murder had been a planned distraction, something to confuse Walsingham, to misdirect his attentions. It seemed almost as certain that the missive delivered to Leonora Beak had not come from Walsingham. Aside from being a blow to Dutch support for the Crown, William’s murder would be an incitement to greater horrors on the world stage, fomented by the Spanish, with whom Gérard was admittedly in league. It was also therefore likely that Gérard knew something about the greater plot.

  Every fiber of Marlowe’s intuition told him that the murder of William the Silent was a stepping-stone on a path to killing the Queen.

  After hours of pleading Marlowe secured, at last, a moment with Gérard in the condemned man’s cell, a dank room in a government house not two blocks from William’s modest palace. When he arrived he found the wretch hanging by his elbows from a low pole.

  The cell was a gray stone, windowless room. There was a menacing fire going in one corner, and blood on the floor. The smell of the place was vicious: excrement, urine, terror.

  Having been lashed mercilessly with a whip, it appeared that honey had been smeared into Gérard’s wounds. The guards, one man told Marlowe, had sent for a goat to lick the honey.

  Marlowe stood before the living corpse.

  “You deserve this,” Marlowe said softly.

  “Soon, I will go to God, who will elevate me above his angels for what I have done.”

  “Soon I will return to England and stop the rest of your plan.” Marlowe knelt and looked into the Frenchman’s eyes. “All you’ve done is murder a man. Nothing else. You’ve broken a commandment. How do you suppose God feels about men who break his laws?”

  Gérard was having difficulty breathing, but he managed a short laugh.

  “What would you know about God’s laws, you English pig?”

  Marlowe leaned close to the man’s ear. “I don’t like to mention it, but I am,
myself, a Catholic. I believe I would know as much as you do about the church.”

  Gérard grinned, a monstrous grimace. “Then you will be happy to learn that you will soon have a Catholic Queen on the throne of England. And there is nothing anyone can do about it.”

  “Not even for Bûter, brea, en griene tsiis?” Marlowe ventured.

  Gérard’s eyes flashed. “Yes,” he muttered. “Say those words to Sir Anthony Babington. He is here, in Delft, staying at William’s home.”

  Marlowe did his best not to react, but all fears had been confirmed. Alas, before he could press the matter with the assassin, several guards returned.

  They brushed Marlowe aside. Having failed to find a goat, they wrapped Gérard in a shirt soaked in alcohol. The Frenchman screamed until his throat gave out. Then, casually, one of the guards sauntered to the fire in the corner. Using long tongs, he picked up an iron pail that smelled like burning bacon fat. He called out a warning, instructing everyone to step away from the prisoner, and then slowly poured the searing fat over Gérard’s head and back. The Frenchman tried again to scream, but only air escaped his mouth.

  Marlowe turned away. He would glean no more information from the man. That man was already dead.

  Winding his way upward, through several guarded hallways, Marlowe came to the front door of the government house. He burst through it, into the evening air. Taking several deep breaths, he rubbed his eyes and shook his head.

  Leonora was there, pacing impatiently.

  “We’ve been duped, both of us.” Marlowe stared at Leonora.

  “You’ve told me your theories,” she sighed wearily. “The message I received was false, we were drawn out of the country of a purpose—”

  “We must go to William’s home immediately!” Marlowe interrupted.

  “Why?” she asked, startled.

  “There is a man there,” Marlowe snapped, beginning to run toward William’s palace.

  * * *

  Moments later Marlowe and Leonora stood at the front door of William’s home pounding on it, once more, to be admitted.

  “Are you absolutely certain of what you’ve just told me?” Marlowe asked Leonora.

  “Certain? No.” She shook her head. “But I think one of the men who stood around William’s dead body in the stairway was Anthony Babington. I’ve only seen him twice, both times at the Bell. But the man in the black cloak with the green hat? He did look like Babington.”

  “I know the one you mean; I picture his face.”

  Then Marlowe pounded on the door again, and kicked it twice.

  At last the knight who had refused them admittance came to the door.

  “What in God’s name do you want?” he rumbled in a voice rife with pain.

  “Let us in,” Marlowe snapped impatiently. “There is a man in his place with whom I mean to speak.”

  “Go away,” the knight sighed wearily. “Go home. There is no one here.”

  “The last time you refused to let me in,” Marlowe seethed, “the result was the death of the man you were supposed to protect.”

  “Marlowe,” Leonora began.

  “Yes.” The knight’s eyes were dead. “But that assassin has been apprehended.”

  “By me!” Marlowe growled. “While you stood here with your thumb in your ass and the same drooling expression you wear now!”

  “Marlowe, stop it,” Leonora insisted.

  Ignoring her, Marlowe took a single step back and drew his rapier. “Step aside or go to hell,” he snarled at the knight.

  The rapier snapped through the air and its point stopped right between the knight’s eyes.

  “We only wish to talk with a guest of the house,” Leonora intervened quickly. “A countryman of ours. Sir Anthony Babington.”

  “No. I said. He is not here.” The knight’s eyes never changed. “He’s gone. No one is here. This place is empty. All gone.”

  “Gone?” Marlowe shouted. “Where?”

  “Back to England, I suppose.” The guard closed his eyes. “God.”

  “Let it go, Marlowe,” Leonora said softly.

  Marlowe hesitated, suddenly realizing that his anger was as much at himself as at the desolate knight. He sheathed his blade in a single arc.

  Leaning forward so that his face nearly touched the knight’s, he whispered harshly, “The fault is yours!”

  The knight didn’t open his eyes. “I know.”

  Marlowe turned to Leonora. “We must return to England at once.”

  “You’re exhausted and wounded,” Leonora objected. “You won’t make it to your horse, let alone back to England.”

  “Gérard was working for Philip,” Marlowe said softly, headed toward his mount. “Philip is working to free Mary. Mary is somehow in contact with Babington. The end of their vile efforts would see Mary on the throne of our country—and Elizabeth dead. I have to make it back to England.”

  Without another word, Marlowe threw himself onto his horse. Sweating, dizzy, and in pain, he urged his mount forward, toward the coast.

  TEN

  LONDON

  Marlowe sat in a completely uncomfortable chair in a very dark room in a nearly airless corner of Hampton Court. The room was small, made of stone, furnished only with the chair in which Marlowe had been told to sit, and a small desk behind which sat the only other chair. Nothing hung on the walls, and the sole light in the gloom issued from a single candle on the desk.

  He had been waiting for more than an hour. He knew that he was a shambles: hair a wild tangle, clothes caked with grime, face unwashed and unshaven. The journey from Delft to London was a blur in his mind. Leonora Beak had mostly been in charge. A combination of fatigue, blood loss, hunger, anger, and shame had rendered Marlowe all but comatose.

  At Buntingford he and Leonora learned that her father was alive—though barely—Lopez was missing, and the Traveling People whom she had helped on the road had stayed for only a day at the changing station, thereafter vanishing into the woods.

  Too weak to ride at that point, Marlowe had been placed in a coach that Leonora managed to acquire. For most of the bumpy ride from Buntingford to Hampton Court Marlowe had slept, all the while being tossed like dice in a cup.

  Just as his head was drooping, the only door to the room burst open and Lord Walsingham glided in, followed by two guards. He was dressed in dark gray, including his cap, and his beard was not as neatly trimmed as it usually was. His eyes were bleary, and he moved across the floor with a slight limp.

  Marlowe struggled to his feet.

  “No!” Walsingham barked. “Sit!”

  Marlowe did exactly that.

  “This,” Walsingham said, flourishing a single page of paper, “is what I have been waiting for.”

  He dropped into his chair behind the desk.

  “My Lord,” Marlowe began, “I have urgent news of—”

  “I know most of it already,” Walsingham assured him briskly.

  “William the Silent…”

  “… is truly gone,” Walsingham interrupted. “Yes.”

  “I—I failed in my task. Utterly. If you—do you require my dismissal from your service? Or—am I to be detained—I have no idea what I’m to do, but—”

  “Marlowe,” Walsingham snapped. “Gather yourself. You did not save William. Neither did his guard, his household, or his country. I’m encouraged to believe that you have vital intelligence in this affair which affects Her Majesty, is that so?

  “Yes, sir, but, let me see—where to begin?” Marlowe said. “Leonora Beak received a missive which we thought was from you but which I now believe was entirely false, or at least altered, and that missive lured us to the Netherlands when we should have remained here in England.”

  Walsingham nodded. “When Lopez told me about the message, I was alarmed. As you have correctly ascertained, it was not mine. Which is why we hold you blameless in your failure to save William’s life. That was not your assignment.”

  “Lopez is safe?” Marlow
e could not hide the relief in his voice.

  “He has been dispatched to another part of the world at the moment.” Walsingham looked down. “But continue.”

  Marlowe related his entire adventure, careful to omit no detail, as Lopez had taught him. Even the Traveling family, the odd presence of the actor Ned Blank, the strange night watchman who disabled the ship in Maldon—anything might contain some important bit of information that only Walsingham’s mind could detect and decipher.

  And then Marlowe offered his conclusion.

  “The last words the assassin Gérard said to me indicate a greater plot,” he said, leaning forward, “than the death of our Dutch ally. I believe that the murder of William was one link in a chain of events that would see Mary on the throne, and our true Queen dead. And then he told me to seek out Sir Anthony Babington.”

  Walsingham nodded. His demeanor was unusually reserved, cold.

  “With our Dutch forces in doubt,” he said deliberately, “we must go to the source of this plot, and stop it before it gains strength. The loss of William is a blow to our cause. Let it not be any more significant than the wound in your own side: difficult, but not deadly.”

  “Agreed,” said Marlowe, ignoring the burning pain in his side. “But as to Babington?”

  “Tell me,” Walsingham went on, more softly, “why do you suppose that the assassin Gérard confided such a key element of the larger scheme to you? Was it the torture?”

  “No,” Marlowe said quickly, “I had no part in that. But. I may have encouraged him to believe that I am more Catholic than I actually am.”

  “I suspected as much.” Walsingham nodded. “Good. It is to our advantage that some believe you to be a secret Catholic, although I know that your true church is England.”

  “My true church is theatre,” Marlowe corrected. “Beyond that, I have no religious affiliation whatsoever, if I may be permitted complete honesty.”

  Walsingham leaned back. “I see. That is why it has not yet occurred to you who sent the false message, the one alleged to be from me.”

  Marlowe’s attention focused. “What are you talking about?”