A Prisoner in Malta (3 page)

“Damn,” Marlowe whispered.

He sipped a breath and began to run. Cocking his arm and steadying his eye, he used the forward motion of his body to give force to his knife. The blade flew through the air and caught the man on horseback in the forearm. The pistol jerked wildly and went off. The man fell from his horse and the horse shivered. It ran away squealing in an eerie high pitch.

The noise momentarily distracted the men attacking Lopez, who used the distraction to his advantage, stabbing one of the men in the chest, his rapier plunging deep into the man's rib cage.

The other man, shortest of the lot, suddenly realizing that he was alone, surveyed the scene, smiled, turned, and began to run as fast as he could in the same direction as the squealing horse.

Only then did Marlowe look around, get his bearings, and take in the landscape.

The coach had stopped in a deserted field close to a grove of crabapple trees heavy with early fruit. In the distance the River Cam could be seen, with its lush fringe of ferns. There were wheeling clouds in the sky, high and white as milk. The day was ending, but the sun was gold, still an hour before setting.

“It's a lovely spot for an ambush,” Marlowe observed, nearly to himself.

“Were you playing dead in the coach?” Lopez asked, trying to catch his breath.

“Yes.”

“Why?” Lopez put away his rapier.

“I'm not sure,” Marlowe answered. “Maybe I hesitated because I felt badly about how I treated Pygott. Or maybe it was just a game. I don't know. Where's the coachman?”

“Dead, over there, other side,” Lopez said, breathing hard. “Come here for a moment, would you?”

Marlowe strode toward Lopez, but stopped a few feet short.

“That man,” Marlowe gasped, staring at the one Lopez had stabbed in the chest. “I know that man!”

“Yes,” said Lopez, his rapier still out.

“He came to see me earlier this very week.” Marlowe stared down at the unmoving figure. “He wanted me to work for the Catholic Church.”

“I know.” Lopez finally put away his weapon. “These are the Pope's men. They wanted you to spy for the Vatican.”

“No,” Marlowe said, “it was clerical, they only wanted me to—that man, he works for my father, in Canterbury. Or so he said; I'd never met him. He only wanted me to find something of importance to my father and then…”

But Marlowe's voice trailed off as he realized that he had been duped.

“Yes, it was a test,” Lopez said. “That would have been the beginning of your—our Papal espionage.”

“But I turned them down,” Marlowe said uncertainly.

“Yes, well, the Pope is the sort of person who never accepts anything but agreement with his dicta. Which is why he sent these men after our coach.”

“What did they want?”

Lopez stared at them. “They wanted the money that the Pope would pay them to stop our coach.”

“No, I mean what was their object in stopping us?”

“Oh, to kill us,” Lopez answered quickly.

“Kill us? Why? Just because I said
no
?”

“Perhaps because the Pope has an inkling—or information—concerning the importance of—concerning why you have been summoned by the Privy Council. And why we are riding in Her Majesty's second-best coach.”

Marlowe glared at the bleeding ruffians. “But, these men—they're idiots. I mean to say: they don't seem like spies or agents or—Christ, Lopez, look at them! This is the best the Pope can do?”

“These are hired roisters, men happy to make a farthing to kill a cat. They are only the first wave. There will be more, many more—and better—before we're done.”

 

TWO

The coachman was not dead. When he'd seen the highwaymen coming at him, he'd screamed and fainted. He was, it seemed, unused to ruffians—or passengers, for that matter. His primary work for the Queen was squiring the royal furniture from one place to another.

Marlowe and Lopez resumed their journey after a cursory attendance to the wounded. Lopez was of the firm opinion that they should all be dispatched at that moment, but Marlowe's gentler sensibilities won out in the end. The Pope's men were left bleeding, groggy, and alive under the crabapple trees.

The coach followed the River Cam; it was rough going. Lopez kept the shutters open, unwilling to be surprised by any further attack. So while the ride was difficult for the backside, it was pleasing to the eye. The Cam roiled sweetly, grouse and quail abounded; here and there a deer looked up.

“How long will this trip take?” Marlowe asked, staring out the window.

“Another two hours, possibly three.”

“It'll be after dark by then. How long if we ask the driver to speed the horses?”

“Five hours.”

Marlowe turned his attention to Lopez, whose eyes were closed.

“How is it longer,” Marlowe asked, “if we go faster?”

Lopez sighed.

“If your eye is fixed on a destination in the distance,” he said, “it's impossible to watch the road in front of you.”

Marlowe shook his head. “I disagree. The eye should always be on the horizon. The faster you get there, the better.”

“I'm going to sleep now,” Lopez murmured.

Lopez began, almost immediately, to snore. If Marlowe had his doubts as to whether or not the sound was theatre or reality, he kept those doubts to himself.

Instead he chose to review certain odd events of the preceding days, trying to make some sense of his present predicament. He thought of his naive meeting with the Pope's men, only two days earlier.

*   *   *

Professor Bartholomew's long lecture on the origin, development, and uses of the letter
J
in the English language had dulled Marlowe's senses beyond rescue.

“The letter
Y,
you see,” Bartholomew droned, “was thought less masculine than the letter
J
when, in 1066, with the Norman invasion of England, the letter
J,
which had not existed in our language before that time, was introduced. It replaced all male names that began with
I
or
Y
. For example,
Yames
became
James
. And so forth.”

Student after student fell victim to the deadly torpor induced by the lecture, until Marlowe was one of the few left awake. As the session ended, bleary-eyed young men staggered from the dark hall. As they did, a strange trio of rough men fell in with the throng.

Once out in the morning sunlight, the students began to disperse, some to study, others to class. Marlowe bid a good morning to several of his fellows, among them Richard Boyle, a childhood acquaintance, and Benjamin Carier, an older student, a quiet bookworm.

When they were gone and Marlowe walked alone, the three strange men came quickly from behind to surround Marlowe. They were all in dark brown cloaks with hoods, giving them a monkish appearance.

“Are you Christopher Marlowe?” one man asked in a rasping voice.

Marlowe quickly assessed the situation and decided on a reasonable course of action.

“I am not.” Marlowe smiled.

“Are you the Christopher Marlowe what was born in Canterbury? Whose father is John Marlowe, shoemaker, and mother Catherine?” the man pressed.

“No, that's him, just up there,” Marlowe said, pointing in the direction of several students who were just walking into the chapel.

“You don't remember me,” another man said, “but we was at the King's School in Canterbury together, you and I.”

“No,” Marlowe said politely, “we weren't. You've never been to school, and I'm not from Canterbury. Sorry. That's Chris Marlowe, just up there. See?”

The first man smiled. He had only three teeth, his stubble seemed made of splinters, and his eyes were dead. “Look, mate. I work for your father, and he's in a bit of a stew.”

“You know,” the second man spoke in a whisper, “it's tough times for a Catholic in this man's country. Some of the talk, well, let's say it's not going in favor of your old Da.”

“My father's not Catholic,” Marlowe began.

In point of fact, Marlowe's father had been born just after King Henry VIII's Act of Supremacy, the law that established the English King, and not a foreign pope, as head of the church. The Anglican Communion was in all other ways indistinguishable from the Catholic—confusing times for the religious in England. But by the time Henry's daughter Elizabeth was on the throne, that confusion had been removed: it was illegal to be a Catholic in England. The Pope's subterranean war to pull England back into the fold was met by Elizabeth's iron determination to uphold her father's law, provoking the most savage plots and heartbreaking betrayals in the history of the country. So Marlowe was absolutely unwilling to admit any religious affiliation, especially to such rude strangers.

“The Anglicans, they've got a certain item what says he
is
Catholic,” the first man continued.

“It won't go well for your father,” the second man insisted, “if this
item
is brought to light.”

“If you worked for my father,” Marlowe said, his fears mounting, “you would have known that he favors the gamache over the buskin, and I see that two of you wear calf-length boots. Not his style. And the third, your silent partner, wears boots that were made in Spain.”

“That's a nice bit of testing,” the second man said, grinning. His face was round and pockmarked, and his nose had been broken several times. “But your father makes both, as you well know, the calf-length and the high boot. If you would care to peek inside one of mine, you'll find his seal.”

“I wouldn't do it,” the first man said, chuckling. “Once that boot's off, none of us would survive the stench.”

Marlowe stared down at the boots for a moment. Two pair actually had been made by his father. The workmanship was unmistakable.

“All right,” he said.

“You are Christopher Marlowe,” the second man said.

“What is it that you want, exactly?” Marlowe asked.

“I told you,” the second man said to no one in particular.

“In that church resides the item in question.” The first man pointed to the high tower of St. Benet's Church, adjacent to the college. “It's nestled in a box on someone's desk. It's locked, the box is. You just bring that box to us. We'll see that it's opened, and the evidence against your father is destroyed.”

“That's all a bit vague,” Marlowe said cautiously.

“We'll give more details,” the second man said, “when you agree to do the job.”

“The job is,” Marlowe said slowly, “that I break into a church office, steal a locked box, and give that box to you without seeing what's inside.”

“Yes.” The first man nodded once. “For your father.”

“I see.”

“So what's it to be?” the second man asked.

Marlowe looked at the silent third man, the shortest of the lot, barely over five feet tall. “Doesn't he ever speak?”

“Swallow my bollocks,” the third man grunted, but his voice betrayed a Spanish accent, or something like it.

“I wouldn't do that either,” the first man warned, chastising the Spaniard with a gaze.

“Well.” Marlowe took in the trio at a glance and smiled, his hand on his dagger. “This bit of burglary you've suggested? I thank you, gentlemen, but no. I will not steal a box from a church.”

Marlowe prepared himself for what seemed a certain and unpleasant battle, when from behind he heard the grating whine of Professor Bartholomew's voice.

“Mr. Marlowe!”

Marlowe looked over his shoulder, and there stood the old man, his black robes dripping off him like night's water.

“Professor,” Marlowe said.

“Tell your classmates to disperse,” Bartholomew commanded. “I wish to speak with you privately.”

His manner was so imposing, so imperious, that the three men backed away a step or two.

“We'll talk again,” the first man warned.

Then, as one, they turned and walked away with a deliberately casual air.

“Mr. Marlowe,” the professor said in a lowered voice, “I wish to speak with you about a disgraceful bit of pen scratching of which, I am told, you are the author.”

“Sir?” Marlowe kept one eye on the retreating trio as he tried to understand what Bartholomew was saying.

“This!” Bartholomew held out a crumpled page and thrust it into Marlowe's face.

Barely readable in its disheveled condition, Marlowe was able to make out the first line on the torn and wrinkled page.

“‘Come live with me, and be my love,'” he said out loud. “Yes. That's mine.”

“Unacceptable, Marlowe!” the old man snorted. “Shameful!”

“I'm still working on it,” Marlowe hedged. “It's not finished.”

“Oh, yes it is,” Bartholomew snapped. “You're to write no more in this vein. Not one word, do you hear me? I'll have no student of mine engaging in
enticement
!”

“It's a poem, sir,” Marlowe began, “not a description of actual events. I have not, as yet, attempted to seduce a shepherdess.”

“Ghastly,” the professor concluded.

“You know,” Marlowe said, smiling, “I'm the only one who doesn't fall asleep in your classes.”

“Yes, yes,” Professor Bartholomew sighed, “I know. Why else would I be speaking to you in such a friendly manner?”

Without waiting for an answer, the old scholar turned on his heel and lumbered away, back toward the relative sanity of his offices.

*   *   *

Marlowe was awakened by a sudden thumping.

“London Bridge,” Lopez announced.

Well over three hundred years old, not quite a thousand feet long, the bridge's stone construction was wide enough to accommodate the coach they were riding in, and another to pass it. Supported by nineteen arches—coincidentally the same number as members of the Privy Council—the bridge felt as solid as a mountain. Still, Marlowe, roused from his sleep, had an uncomfortable, queasy feeling as the carriage jolted over the black water of the Thames.