A Prisoner in Malta (10 page)

The man cocked his blade straight back, ready to thrust the point directly into Marlowe.

Dazed, the breath knocked out of him, Marlowe saw the point firing toward his heart. Instantly he dropped onto the floor. The point of the sword struck stone. A spark crackled there.

Marlowe rolled toward the man, reached, and stabbed his dagger into the man's boot, through the foot.

The man howled and raised his leg reflexively. Marlowe sprang to his feet and kicked the man backward. Already off his balance, the man fell against the opposite wall and then onto the stone floor, moaning.

Marlowe stood on the man's sword and placed the point of his rapier at the man's gullet.

“Be still!” Marlowe commanded.

The man did his best to dampen his complaint.

Marlowe reached down to retrieve his dagger.

As he did, the man drew a pistol from some concealed place underneath his tunic and cocked the hammer.

Just in time Marlowe swatted the gun from the man's hand, but it went off. The sound echoed in the stone hallway like thunder.

“Help!” the man began to yell. “Help me!”

“Marlowe!” Lopez shouted. “Silence that man. Now!”

Marlowe looked down.

“God forgive me,” he said.

Then he thrust the rapier into the man's heart. The man stopped yelling and more blood stained his tunic.

Lopez appeared in the next second, dragging the nearly dead prisoner behind him.

“Our man's not going to make it to the ship,” Marlowe said, pulling his dagger from the guard's foot.

“Oh, yes, he will.” Lopez reached into the pouch on his belt.

He produced a vial of water and a small leather pouch.

“Drink this,” he commanded.

The prisoner drank.

“Now,” Lopez continued, holding the small pouch to the man's face, “breathe deeply, several times.”

The man did as he was told. A split second later the man's head snapped backward.

“Holy hell,” he snorted in a high-pitched voice. His eyes opened wide.

“What was in that?” Marlowe asked.

“I'll tell you later,” Lopez said. “Get that tunic off the dead man. And the helmet. We'll need the helmet too.”

Marlowe immediately got the guard out of his white-cross tunic. Slipping it over the thin prisoner, he tied it around the narrow waist with the guard's belt. Setting the guard's helmet onto the prisoner's head, Marlowe stood back.

“It looks like an ill-fitting costume in a cheap play,” Marlowe whispered.

Suddenly they could both hear other prisoners from the hole moving slowly toward them, up the hall behind the door on the left.

“It'll have to do,” Lopez snapped. “Come on.”

He took off up the hall to the exit, dragging the prisoner along.

They came to the front door; it was still bolted from the inside. Lopez grabbed the lock.

“Wait,” Marlowe said suddenly.

He stepped forward, took a deep breath, and jerked the door open.

“Look out, mate!” he yelled in his ruffian accent, hoping that the Kettering man was still in evidence. “They're getting away! Something's happened. We were overcome. I think the guard down there is dead. I've got another one here. Wounded!”

As his eyes adjusted to the hot light of the arena, he could see that the Kettering man was, indeed, still there.

“The—the prisoners are trying to escape?” he said, not believing it.

“Yes! Down there!” Marlowe pointed.

Lopez stepped out, holding up the disguised prisoner.

“I don't know how many there are,” Lopez gasped, “or how they got out. But they're coming. That guard, at the center door—there is a lot of blood. And this one is dying.”

“Get help,” Marlowe urged. “Get your men. Now!”

The Kettering man, a growing look of panic on his face, turned and shouted to his men.

“We've got trouble!” he announced.

“I'm a doctor,” Lopez said with great authority. “I'll take care of this wounded man. You just get in there. I'm worried about my father! God knows what those other prisoners will do!”

It was a very plausible improvisation.

“Christ,” Marlowe complained loudly to everyone in earshot. “This is a mess!”

The other guards came running.

“Get in there,” the Kettering shouted, “we've got men escaping!”

The guards shoved Lopez aside and rushed in. The Kettering man paused at the door.

“I don't understand what's going on,” he said to Marlowe. “Maybe you ought to wait here a moment.”

“No, thank you, mate,” Marlowe sang out. “You can't keep your prisoners inside. And, see, that's really the purpose of a prison, ain't it? Keeping prisoners inside? So, no, I'm not staying here, not with them vermin about.”

“And I've got to tend to your guard here,” Lopez said urgently. “He's badly wounded.”

“I don't—I don't know,” the Kettering man stammered.

Suddenly there was much shouting from within the prison hallway.

“We've got one dead, one wounded,” someone was shouting, “and all—all of the men in the hole—they're out!”

“Out?” the Kettering man exploded. “Bleeding Christ! How the hell did they get the ladder down?”

He turned and ran into the prison stronghold.

Marlowe and Lopez stood frozen for a stunned moment, looking around, both unable to quite believe that the plan had, for the most part, succeeded.

“Let's go, then,” Marlowe urged softly.

“Immediately,” Lopez agreed.

With that they both strode quickly toward the gate, and their waiting comrades, dragging their prize between them.

*   *   *

The
Ascension
had already cast off most of her lines by the time Marlowe and company appeared on the docks. The prisoner was unconscious by then, still being dragged between Marlowe and Lopez, who were attempting to make the man appear drunk.

Two anxious sailing men stood on the deck of the ship by the gangplank, ready to haul it up. One of them was rocking back and forth impatiently; the other kept his eyes on the long street leading to the docks.

“Come on, then,” the impatient man yelled when the group drew closer.

Lopez turned to the old man at whose house they had been guests. The man's hood was pulled forward so far that his face could not be seen.

“I fear that they will come for you,” Lopez said to the old man. “I pray that your son is safe.”

“Nothing in this world is certain,” the bass voice rumbled.

“What can we do to help?” Lopez asked.

“Pray,” the old man said.

“That I will,” Lopez vowed.

Then the old man turned to Marlowe.

“And you,” he said softly. “Would you pray for a Jew, Christopher Marlowe?”

“God, of course I would. Do you mistake me for a Spaniard?” Marlowe scowled. “I've prayed for Dr. Lopez daily—in both Latin and English. I'd pray for you in your own language, if I knew it.”

The old man nodded. “Then learn this word first, and let us speak it together:
shalom
.”

“
Shalom
.” Marlowe nodded. “I know that one. It means
peace
.”

“Yes,” the old man said. “It also means that something is complete: you've found your man, your work is done.”

“It also means, if my education does not fail me,” Marlowe answered, “the absence of discord. That meaning seems, perhaps, best of all.”

The old man turned to Lopez and said, softly, “You were right about him.”

With that the old man and his family turned, moving, again, as one, and seemed to float across the docks and back into the town.

“Come on!” the sailor at the top of the gangplank shouted again. “We're away with this tide!”

Marlowe and Lopez muscled their man up the plank and onto the deck in short order. The plank was drawn, the last lines cast off, and the
Ascension
lurched away from the dock as if it had been shoved toward the open ocean by some giant, unseen hand.

The sudden jolt startled the prisoner into semiconsciousness.

“Where am I?” he piped, slightly panicked.

“It's all right, my friend,” Marlowe assured him. “Walsingham sent us. You're on an English ship with the Queen's men. You're safe and you're going home.”

The man raised his head, looked at Marlowe, and began to cry.

“Home?”

“That's right,” Marlowe assured him. “Now, what do you need?”

“Water, food, bath,” the prisoner managed to gasp.

“Which first?” Lopez asked.

“At the same time,” the man said, “if possible.”

And then he collapsed again.

“I'll get him into a tub,” Marlowe volunteered, “if you can manage the food and drinking water.”

“Done,” Lopez agreed. “His room is the first on the right down below.”

The
Ascension
was a clean ship. The crew was all professional men, sailing men, and clearly better paid than most. They wore a sort of uniform dress: black boots, loose pants, blue shirts. Marlowe considered the crisp air of order and confidence and came to the conclusion that Mr. Cordal, the ship's owner, was probably also in Walsingham's employ. Good business and the Queen's government were certainly affable bedfellows, but Marlowe was also suddenly wary of every man onboard.

He all but carried the prisoner down the steps to the appointed room below. There was a large bed, a writing desk, a hooked rug, and an ornate brass tub already filled with steaming water. On a small table close to the bed there was a pitcher surrounded by several mugs.

Marlowe eased the prisoner down onto the bed and then checked the pitcher. It was filled with fresh water and orange slices. He filled a mug, sat on the bed, roused the prisoner, and helped him to drink the mug dry.

The prisoner nodded, gasping a little.

“Food's on the way,” Marlowe assured him.

“I—I should tell you,” the man began, and then lapsed, once more, into unconsciousness.

Marlowe laid him down and began to pull off the oversized boots. Next he wrestled with the tunic. The prisoner's half-opened eyes displayed a degree of alarm that Marlowe didn't quite understand.

“It's all right,” Marlowe said soothingly. “The bath's drawn, we'll just get you into it. Come on.”

The prisoner's eyes opened wider, and the voice squeaked, but didn't seem to form proper words. At the same time, Marlowe dragged the prisoner's foul undershirt off and stood back, prepared to help the prisoner up, out of the grimy trousers, and into the tub.

He was not prepared, however, for what he saw next.

The prisoner was, in fact, a woman.

*   *   *

At that moment in Valletta, in the lovely courtyard, the merchant Abraham Abulafia, descendent of the great Hebrew mystic of the same name, threw back his hood and sat down at the table next to his son, Mikha'el.

“What now?” Mikha'el asked, picking a date from the tray on the table.

“Now? We wait,” his father said.

“Wait for the knights to realize that we helped set free their prized English prisoner, you mean. Why did we do this, father? Why did we help these English?”

The old man sat back, feeling the setting sun on his face.

“Rodrigo Lopez,” he told Mikha'el, as if it were the complete answer.

“Your friendship with him has always troubled me,” the younger man said, shaking his head. “He's a
convert,
a traitor to his faith.”

The old man shook his head and smiled. “If I told you that I was a camel, would you believe me?”

“What?”

“Just saying the words, ‘I'm a Christian' scarcely makes a man a convert. Lopez pretends, yes. But do you really imagine that Walsingham and the English Queen believe him? They know. They know a camel when they see one.”

“But, if they know—” Mikha'el began.

“They don't care,” his father interrupted.

“Why?” It was a question with several meanings.

“It doesn't matter to the Queen because Dr. Lopez is, perhaps, the greatest healer in the world, and has twice saved her life. Walsingham doesn't care because he sees Lopez as the perfect instrument: both spectacularly worthwhile and supremely expendable. But why does Lopez do it? That should be your question.”

“Yes,” Mikha'el demanded, “why does he do it?”

“He does it to be the Queen's personal physician.” The old man's eyes narrowed. “He will soon be the only man in the world who can hold a knife to the heart of England's monarch.”

Just as Mikha'el realized what his father was saying, a thin gray cloud passed overhead, and seemed to cut the sun in half.

 

NINE

AT SEA

Marlowe stood speechless, unable to avert his eyes despite a desperate attempt to do so. The prisoner from Malta was a woman. There was clearly no denying that. There was also not the slightest hope of explaining it.

Marlowe tried to speak, but found he had lost the faculty.

When Lopez plunged through the cabin door, food in hand, the same malady instantly struck him.

Barely able to drag herself from the bed, the young woman slowly made her way to the steaming tub.

“After what I've been through,” she croaked, “I don't mind being stared at, but this silence is making me uncomfortable. Is that my food?”

Lopez nodded dumbly.

The woman tore off the rest of her clothing and lowered herself into the tub, splashing water everywhere.

“God's pig-pissing kingdom,” the woman said, sighing and sinking down into the hot water. “Now. Food?”

Lopez stood motionless. Out of the corner of his mouth he whispered, “Marlowe! What have you done?”

“What do you mean what have I done?” Marlowe shot back.