The Scar-Crow Men

ABOUT THE BOOK

1593. Queen Elizabeth’s trusted spymaster Walsingham has been dead for two years.

And as plague sweeps through the streets and stews of London, so suspicion and mistrust sweep through the court and government. No one feels safe. Even the celebrated swordsman, adventurer and philanderer, Will Swyfte, is not immune and must watch his back.

It is when his best friend and colleague, the playwright Christopher Marlowe, is killed in a pub brawl that Will decides he must act. The murder has all the hallmarks of an assassination. But in going in search of Kit’s killer, he discovers that there are those in positions of power and influence who are not what they seem...

Against a backcloth of growing paranoia and terror, Will detects the malign machinations of England’s hidden enemy, the Unseelie Court. Now friendless and with these devils at his back, the country’s greatest spy may find that even his vaunted skills are no match for the supernatural powers arrayed against him. The choice is simple: uncover the true nature and intention of this vile conspiracy – or face the executioner’s axe...

THE

SCAR-CROW

MEN

MARK CHADBOURN

For Elizabeth, Betsy, Joe and Eve

PROLOGUE

PAST THE CANDLEWICK STREET PLAGUE PIT THEY RACE, BY THE RED crosses blooming on doors like spring poppies, and the words God have mercy daubed on house after house. Breath burning in their chests, they stumble and fall in the night-dark alleys only to haul themselves up on shaking legs to run again.

They are not consumed by terror of the sickness that has left London sweating in a feverish vision of its own demise, with florid images of blackened skin and blood haunting every thought. It is fear of what lies at their backs, sweeping through the filthy streets, caught in the glow of candles, like moths, eyes blazing with fierce passions. The ones who have footsteps like whispers, whose passing is a cold breath on the back of the neck.

‘Do not look behind. Do not slow,’ Christopher Marlowe yells to his companion.

His desperation rings off the wattle walls that press in on either side. In the heat of the late spring night, dark patches of sweat stain his grey doublet. His short Dutch cloak has been torn by a nail and his flat-top hat lost several streets back.

Marlowe is a playwright, one of the most famous in England, but he has other work, secret, dirty and dangerous. In intermittent shafts of moonlight, Marlowe’s face appears too pale, his features etched with a profound sadness that is surprising in a man still in his twenties. His eyes are dark against his almost translucent skin, the clipped black beard and moustache as wispy as the first face hair of a boy.

Beside him, Jack Wainwright is like a Kentish oak. Though almost ten years older than his companion, with a beard streaked with grey, he could easily shoulder a full beer barrel at the Mermaid Tavern on Cheapside. The whites of his eyes show clearly beneath his heavy brows. Scared, he ignores Marlowe’s order and glances back.

Lights dance in the dark, drawing closer.

‘We could hide and take them by surprise,’ Wainwright says with a wavering voice that contains no enthusiasm. Under his working clothes, a loose coat over a shirt belted with cord, his sweat is cold.

‘Would you take that risk? You are strong, but you are not a fighting man. And I, God help me, can do damage only with a quill,’ Marlowe gasps. At the crossroads, he pauses, tries to steady his pounding heart, takes his bearings and then moves on.

Careering into the middle of a street near ankle-deep in dung, the two men skid to a halt a hand’s-breadth from stamping hooves and creaking wheels. Eyeing them from beneath the brim of his battered hat, the driver spits an oath through the filthy cloth tied tightly across his mouth. He cracks his whip and urges the lumbering horse on. It is the death-cart. In the back, the wrapped bodies are stacked like cordwood, leaking fluids on to the roadway with every jerk and rattle. For a moment, Marlowe and Wainwright stare after the wagon as it disappears into the night.

With a rough shove, the older man urges his companion on. ‘We shall not outrun them.’

‘No. It is too late for us now,’ the playwright mutters under his breath. ‘Perhaps it was always too late.’

The route between the filthy hovels is as black as pitch, but Kit has run it many times to avoid the constables and beadles, the drunken cutpurses and the low men to whom he owes money. Continuing west, they pass the open shutter of a cellar crammed to bursting with the poor, huddled in the dark in the reek of their own sweat. Pale faces glance up from the gloom, eyes wide with hopelessness.

Marlowe picks a path through a maze of stables and stores until he sees the spire of St Paul’s silhouetted against the night sky. The cathedral would be open for sinners to find sanctuary. He urges Wainwright on.

‘We can bolt the door,’ he says, clapping a hand on his fellow’s shoulder. ‘Pile the pews against it.’ Although he knows it will do little good.

The fugitives tumble into the candlelit cathedral and slam the heavy door behind them. The echoes rumble like thunder through the cavernous interior of the grand old building. Their breath ragged, they inhale the ghost of incense. With trembling fingers, they draw the bolts lightning-fast, a moment before something crashes against the oak with the force of a carriage. The two men are hurled across the worn flagstones, the impact knocking the wind out of them. Whatever is outside continues to pound the door with a steady, deafening rhythm.

Thoom. Thoom. Thoom. A funeral drum.

The blood hammers so loud in his head, Marlowe can barely think, but after a moment he gathers himself. ‘Quick! Help me!’ he calls. Wiping the moisture from his brow, he scrambles to his feet and runs to the nearest pew. It is too heavy for him to lift alone, but Wainwright grasps his end and raises it effortlessly. The two men haul it across the door, and then return for two more.

‘’Twill not delay them long,’ Wainwright shouts above the booming echoes. His face is red, his sweat vinegar-sharp in the air.

‘It will buy us a moment or two. That is all I need.’ Fighting back his queasy dread, Marlowe, followed by Wainwright, runs down the nave’s great length. The locals call it Paul’s Walk and it is nearly six hundred feet long, making the cathedral the third-longest in Europe, so the clergy boast. Past the scars of the destruction inflicted by Old Henry’s dissolution and the Chantries Acts they race, under the vaulted roof and past the triforium which gives the cathedral a grandeur that makes Kit wish he was a Christian with a God who would listen to his pleas. He fixes his attention on the stained glass of the great rose window at the east end, hoping to see a glimmer of dawn, although he knows in his heart there is still a good half-hour to go.

In the sanctified interior, Jack Wainwright has calmed a little, though he winces at every crash against the door. ‘What were they doing in that house? Did we really see that ... that terrible thing?’ he asks, kneading his hands. Marlowe knows his companion hopes for a denial. When none comes, Wainwright crosses himself and blinks away tears of dread.

‘Put it out of your mind. We have little time left to us. Spend it on whatever pleasant thoughts you can summon.’ Distracted, Marlowe continues to search along the nave.

‘Pleasant thoughts!’ Wainwright exclaims, lifting his hat to run his fingers through sweat-plastered hair.

Marlowe tries to ignore the sour taste of failure. He recalls the hope he felt as he readied himself for the mission at sunset, but as in all his dealings with the Enemy he had also prepared himself for the worst. Now it is a matter of make-do and hope once again. Against his hip, the sack weighs heavily. Will its contents be enough to turn the tide of events?

As the crashes against the great oak door grow louder, he glances back and knows it will not hold much longer.

Grasping a candlestick, the playwright drives the shadows back until he finds the object of his search in the north aisle of the choir. A wooden plaque has been fastened to a pillar to mark the grave of Sir Francis Walsingham. A rush of memories surprises Marlowe with their intensity. Though there had never been any love lost between him and England’s former spymaster, he still thinks the funeral was a sad end to a powerful man.

He recalls standing at that same spot three years ago amid the tight knot of men: Will, Burghley, a handful of others, heads bowed, faces solemn. Candlelight and shadows, the sweet smell of incense, the muttered prayers of the priest rustling all around. The Queen, whom the great man had served so well, was noticeably absent. There had been none of the pomp and ceremony that usually greeted the passing of such a dignitary, no cathedral draped in black, no procession of the curious public to see the interment. The funeral was at night, out of sight of the masses, as if it was a guilty secret to be quickly hidden away. They blamed the quiet affair on the huge debts that hung over Walsingham at his death, but Marlowe knows the truth.

The flickering candle drips hot balls of wax on to the plaque with its banal Latin inscription outlining what is public knowledge of the spymaster’s life. The playwright laughs bitterly at the volumes of truth that have been omitted.

Dropping to his knees, he finds the unmarked stone slab beside the final resting place of his former master’s son-in-law, Sir Philip Sidney. He sees that the other great men buried in the cathedral have towering alabaster monuments, but Walsingham’s grave is as he lived his life, unobtrusive, a shadow, easily missed.

From the sack tied to his side, Marlowe draws a pot of ink and, with his quill, begins to deface the tomb.

In the beginning was the Word, he writes.

Wainwright squats beside him, babbling, ‘Why are we here? Why do you do this?’

The pounding on the door suddenly ceases. The silence that follows is somehow worse.

‘Is there nothing that can save us?’ the big man pleads. ‘I could turn myself to God and pray for forgiveness.’

‘If you feel there is some good in it, then do it.’ Kit’s tone is warm and he hopes it will comfort, but he sees a shadow cross his companion’s face and knows he has accepted the suggestion too readily. Wainwright begins to shake until Marlowe puts a steadying hand on his shoulder.

‘We should go our separate ways. That at least gives one of us a fighting chance,’ the playwright urges in a quiet, calm voice.

Wainwright nods. ‘I have no regrets, Master Marlowe. I have done good work for the Queen and our country, though I have not always been a good man.’

‘I have no regrets, either. What will be, will be.’

The harsh grating of bolts being slowly drawn echoes along the vast nave. Yet there is no one near the door. Marlowe and Wainwright spring to their feet and shake hands before racing back along the nave, Wainwright to the north door, Marlowe to the south. Crouching behind a stone pillar, the playwright can just make out the vague form of his colleague in the gloom on the far side of the cathedral.

The west doors crash open. The pews fall aside as if they are autumn leaves. Footsteps echo off the flags. Whispery voices chill the blood.

Marlowe knows he should run, but he has to see. Keeping to the shadows around the pillar, he watches the pools of candlelight along the nave. Grey shapes flit around the edges of the illumination. Then, after a moment, one of them walks into full view, stands and looks around.

Naked to the waist, his skin has the colour of bone, his cadaverous head shaved and marked with blue and black concentric circles. Black rings line his staring eyes as he searches the shadows of the cathedral. Leather belts criss-cross his chest to secure the axe and sword on his back. His name is Xanthus.

Ice water sluices through Marlowe, and recognition.

In the candlelight, a cruel smile plays on the lips of the new arrival, and he takes from a pouch at his hip a silver box large enough to contain a pair of shoes. It is ornately carved. Marlowe thinks he glimpses a death’s-head on its lid before Xanthus places the box on the flagstones and flips it open.

Run, the voice in the playwright’s head insists, but he is in thrall to the curious sight. Why a box? What does it contain?

For a moment the only sound is the wind whistling through the open doors. Then a faint rustling begins. Marlowe spies movement at the edge of the dark interior of the box, one small shape wriggling, then another, then three. And from its depths streams a swarm of black spiders, each one as big as a man’s hand. Too many for the size of the box, it seems.

A gasp comes from the other side of the cathedral. Wainwright, you fool, the younger man thinks.

Xanthus’ lips pull back from small, pearly teeth, he glances into the shadows where the man hides and in a black tide the spiders wash towards the unseen spy. A moment later a cry of agony echoes up to the vaulted roof and Wainwright staggers into the candlelight, tearing at his skin. The creatures are all over him, biting. The pale figure only watches and grins.

Marlowe clasps a hand to his mouth in horror. He sees raw flesh on his companion’s face, and blood flowing freely to pool around the man’s shoes. Screams fill the vast space of the cathedral. However much Wainwright rips at the spiders, he cannot stop the agony. Wet bone gleams on the doomed man’s head, and the back of his hands.

The screams subside. He staggers like a man in his cups, and falls to his knees, still slapping at his skin weakly. And when he pitches forward on to the cold stone, the creatures still feed.

Covering his face, Marlowe tries to drive the hideous vision from his mind.

This is only the start, he thinks.

Gripping the cold iron ring, the playwright throws open the south door and bolts into the warm night. His laboured breathing echoes off the walls of the houses, punctuated by the beat of his Spanish leather shoes on the dried mud. The thunder of blood in his head destroys all thoughts, and it is only when he is racing south through the winding streets towards Blackfriars that he realizes fortune is with him; but not with poor Wainwright.

He forces aside a tide of regret and grief and guilt. Will always told him he would never thrive as a spy because he felt too keenly. Now he understands that the past no longer matters, nor do his failings and dashed hopes. Only the future is important, and the slim chance that he can do something to avert the coming tragedy.

After a few moments the playwright hears his pursuers on the trail once more. Time is short.

Marlowe reaches the muddy banks of the slow-moving Thames, black under the dark sky, and he thinks of the River Styx. He smells wet wood and vegetation, and hears the symphonic creaks of straining ropes on the boats moored along the river’s edge. Across the water is his own personal heaven: Bankside, and the gardens surrounding the Swan Theatre and the Rose, and the stews and dives where he can be the man he wants to be, away from the scrutiny and demands of powerful people.

Fearing he is too late, the playwright searches along the sticky path between Blackfriars and Baynard’s Castle. But then he hears the stamp of hooves and follows the sound to find a young man dozing beside his horse, swathed in a brown woollen cloak. Kit studies the sleeper briefly, seeing the clear skin and slender frame and innocence, and suddenly he feels so very old. Gently, he shakes the young man awake.

‘Tom? Thank you for coming, but there is now a need for urgency,’ the spy says.

Tom rises, stretching. He is taller than Marlowe, his eyes as grey as the winter sky, his hair blond, falling over his ears and to the nape of his neck. ‘I thought you would not come. What is your wish? The horse?’ he asks sleepily. He doesn’t notice the playwright’s dishevelled state.

‘That is for you, to get as far away from here as you can, and quickly.’ Marlowe looks on his young friend with affection, and a rising sadness, and he tries to keep the edge of fear out of his voice.

A howl echoes only a few streets away. The playwright cannot be sure if it was made by a beast or something that had the shape of a man. The Enemy can never be considered men, he thinks with a pang of bitterness. They have no compassion, no joy or love.

From the sack at his side, Marlowe pulls a thick sheaf of papers, tied with string and sealed with red wax. ‘Tom, listen to me. You must deliver this to my good friend Will Swyfte.’

‘England’s greatest spy?’

Marlowe smiles wryly. ‘Yes, that is indeed how he is known. But first, and quickly, I must write a note to accompany the work.’ He retrieves his quill and the pot of ink.

A troubled thought distracts him and he peers deep into Tom’s face, searching for familiar signs, knowing it is not enough. Then he puts one hand at the back of the young man’s neck and pulls him into a deep kiss. When he breaks away, he stares into Tom’s eyes; it is still not enough, but he has to hope.

‘What is wrong?’ Tom asks. ‘You are not yourself.’

Marlowe laughs at that.

Hearing his pursuers closing in upon their position, his hand trembles as he grips the quill. Too much is at stake, and he dare not write plainly. But too obscure and Will will not understand his warning. In the end, he can only trust in his friend’s intellect.

I fear this may be our last communication, my dear, trusted friend. The truth lies within. But seek the source of the lies without, he scrawls. Trust no one. He underlines this last.

Quickly, he folds the letter and slides it under the string before handing the complete bundle to Tom. By this time, the young man is alarmed by his friend’s actions. He senses their finality.

‘You will come with me?’ Tom asks. ‘My horse will carry two a short distance.’

‘There is nothing I would like more than to ride away with you, good Tom, and recapture those honeyed moments that made me so happy. But I fear it would mean your death. Now, be away, and fast.’ Marlowe hears the faintest tremor in his voice, but he hides it quickly, seals it with a smile.

He kisses Tom again, and turns to the boats so his young friend will not linger. He allows himself one quick glance back when he hears the hoofbeats drawing away, and a moment of sadness too, and then he scrabbles to free the mooring rope of the nearest waterman’s vessel.

Whispers roll along the river bank. Shadows emerge from an alley.

Lurching into the cold shallows, Marlowe feels the mud sucking at his shoes as he launches the boat into the current and drags himself on board. Loud splashing erupts behind him, but the current takes Marlowe away just quickly enough. Shadows flit along the water’s edge, keeping pace.

Ahead, the first gleam of dawn lights the horizon. The playwright looks to the bank and sees the grey forms melt back into the darkened streets.

Marlowe feels no relief. He lies back in the boat, letting the current take him where it will. This life is already over for him, he knows that. There is no escape.

Somewhere a killer lurks in plain sight, with a plan that threatens to engulf England in a rising tide of darkness. He listens to the water sloughing past the boat and hears in it the whispers that have haunted him since he made the first shocking discovery. Two words repeated in a rhythmic chant.

The end, the end.

The end.

CHAPTER ONE

THE MAN, DANGEROUS AND CONTROLLED, WAS MOVING THROUGH what felt like a dream, with devils and wolves, cats and dragons, dolls and jesters on every side. Fantastical faces peered at him from the growing shadows, gloved hands rising to mouths in surprise or intrigue or desire.

An excited chatter of anticipation buzzed through the upper gallery of the Rose Theatre that evening. Amid the heady atmosphere of timber, fresh plaster, perfume and sweat, the masked guests parted to allow the man through, their whispered comments following wherever he went: ‘Spy ... spy ... England’s greatest spy.’

The evening’s entertainment was yet to begin, but the Rose was already full. The carriages and horses had been arriving in a steady stream under the late afternoon sun that cast Bankside’s green fields and dusty roads in a warm, golden haze. The women had alighted, their flat-fronted bodices and divided overskirts in popinjay blue, or sunset orange, or lusty-gallant red, the celebratory colours sending a message of defiance in dark times. The men wore quilted doublets and flamboyant white ruffs, peasecod bellies, jerkins in cloth of silver and half-compass cloaks. Their colours were more muted, greens and blacks and browns, but the sumptuous velvet and silk embroidered with gleaming gold spoke of that same defiance. The court of Queen Elizabeth, in all its glory, would not be bowed.

The spy, Will Swyfte, was a storm cloud amid the summery festivities, unmasked, dressed all in black, quilted doublet embroidered with silver, a jerkin of fine Spanish leather and a cloak. His black hair reached to the nape of his neck, his moustache and chin-hair trimmed that very day. His eyes too appeared black. He quietly cursed the ornate masks that hid the faces of the good men and women of England as they hung over the wooden rails of the upper galleries. He couldn’t see the eyes with any clarity, and certainly couldn’t identify any threat that might lurk there. And threat there was aplenty, all around London.

Underneath the musk of the crowd, the man caught the fragrant whiff of the numerous concoctions of herbs carried to ward off the terrible death. It was a pleasant change from the sickeningly sweet stink of rot that hung over the city like a permanent autumn fog.

Pausing at the rail, the spy peered down the well of the theatre to the yard in front of the stage. The audience was lit by the dying rays of the sun falling through the central, open area of the thatched roof. The black-garbed man studied the red-brick and timber frame of the many-sided theatre, noting the best vantage points, the escape routes, the places where a life could be taken without drawing too much attention. Even in that crowded, confined space throbbing with noise, death could wait patiently for an opportunity.

‘Still no sign of Master Marlowe.’ It was Nathaniel Colt, the spy’s assistant, also unmasked. Eyes bright and inquisitive, he was smaller and younger than his master, slim and wiry, with a thin, tufty beard and moustache that made him appear younger still. ‘I would have thought he’d rather lose his writing hand than miss his own first night.’

‘Kit is a mercurial soul. He very rarely takes the path one would expect. Though I have not seen him for several days now, I have never known him to miss the opportunity for applause.’

Or not to pass on the vital secrets he promised three days ago, Will thought. The playwright’s hastily scrawled message had implied news of great importance, and a great threat too.

‘Why pass on information here?’ Nathaniel pressed. ‘Why tonight? What could be so important that it could not be conveyed within the safe walls of one of the palaces, or at his own residence, or in one of the many vile and disgusting establishments you and Master Marlowe enjoy?’

The older man had already considered all those questions. ‘I will ask Kit when he arrives. In the meantime, Nat, enjoy this fine entertainment that he and Master Henslowe have provided for us.’

With a shrug, the assistant returned his attention to the stage. ‘There is still some novelty to be found in these theatres, I suppose,’ he muttered. ‘When Master Henslowe built the Rose six years ago, I doubted his good sense. The Bankside inn-yards had always provided a serviceable venue for plays.’

‘Master Henslowe is sharp as a pin when it comes to matters of gold.’ Will leaned on the rail, continuing to search the audience for any sign of danger: a hand raised too fast here, a man skulking away from his companions there. He knew his instincts were rarely wrong. He could feel some unseen threat lurking in the theatre. But where? He turned again to Nat. ‘He bought this land for a song, here on the marshy river borders. And the theatre is close to the many earthy attractions of Europe’s greatest city, the brothels and the bear-baiting arenas, the inns and gaming dens. There is always an audience to hand.’

‘Then he must be doubly pleased that Master Marlowe insisted his first night be held here, for an audience of the court only. With the theatres all closed by order of the Lord Mayor because of this damnable sickness, Master Henslowe’s purse must be crying for mercy.’

‘The aristocracy are starved of good entertainment in these plague-days and for a new Marlowe they will clearly travel even unto the jaws of death.’

Will’s eye was caught by a subtle nod of the head at the rear of the gallery, where the lamps had just been lit. John Carpenter waited, scowling. His fingers unconsciously leapt to the hair that hid the jagged scar running down the left side of his face, the bear that had attacked him in Muscovy never forgotten.

Pushing his way through the audience, Will nodded to his fellow agent. ‘Anything?’

Carpenter grunted. ‘I do not understand why we take such measures. Who in their right mind would strike in such a crowded place?’

‘An attack here would send a message to the Queen and the Privy Council that nowhere is safe.’ Will looked out across the masked audience filling the upper gallery. Though he was half hidden by shadows, one cat-masked woman in emerald bodice and skirts turned to look at him directly. Even with the disguise, Will recognized Grace, the young woman he had been charged to protect and the sister of his own missing love. ‘Kit’s message implied a mounting danger. We take no risks.’

Carpenter shook his head with frustration. ‘The Queen is safe and sound in Nonsuch. A few popinjays make poor targets.’

‘You have somewhere better to be?’ Will gave a wry smile. ‘With pretty Alice Dalingridge, perhaps?’

The scarred man looked away, his cheeks colouring. ‘Who do you fear? The Spanish? Papists? Or our true Enemy? The Unseelie Court have not been active for many months.’

‘Which is when they are at their most dangerous.’ In his mind’s eye, Will saw white faces and churchyard eyes emerging from the night-mist on a lonely moor. Those foul creatures still haunted the dreams of England, and, he feared, always would.

Further along the upper gallery, the good men and women of the court surged back from an area beneath one of the lamps. Angry shouts rose up.

‘Come!’ Drawing his blade, Will raced along the outer wall of the gallery. Carpenter remained close at his heels.

The two men found their ally, Robert, Earl of Launceston, pressed against the plaster, three swordpoints at his neck. His unnaturally pale face loomed out of the shadows like a ghost, the absence of colour in his grey woollen cloak and doublet only adding to his macabre appearance.

His three opponents eyed the two newly arrived men, contemptuous smiles creeping on to their lips. ‘England’s greatest spy,’ the leader sneered.

Will recognized the wiry, red-headed man: Tobias Strangewayes, the most prominent of the new band of spies the Earl of Essex had established to rival the traditional secret service. He was a proficient swordsman, but he had a hot temper that meant he would never be a master with the rapier.

‘Leave him be,’ Carpenter growled.

When the scarred spy made to advance, Will held him back with an outstretched arm, although they shared an equal contempt for Strangewayes and his men. In a court now riven with factions, Essex’s rival group served only to distract attention from the true threats facing England. ‘Now, now, John. There are only three of them. Why, that is no challenge for Robert.’

‘Perhaps another time.’ Launceston’s voice was as devoid of emotion as his face. ‘A little aid would not go amiss at this moment.’

Strangewayes’ eyes were black slits. ‘I warned your man that if he spoke to me again there would be a reckoning. Your master may tolerate his unnatural tastes, but I do not have to.’ He drew the tip of his rapier in a circle a finger’s-width from Launceston’s neck.

‘You profess a moral stance, yet act like a rogue. Would you spill the blood of an unarmed man here, in full view of women? Even spies like you must abide by the law.’ Frustrated that he was dealing with this conflict instead of searching for the real threat, Will’s voice hardened and he levelled his rapier at the red-headed man.

‘I can beat you in a fair fight, Swyfte.’ Strangewayes moistened his lips, but Will could see the uncertainty in his darting eyes.

‘Leave Launceston alone.’ Carpenter took another step forward. ‘He is a better man than you.’

‘Better than I?’ The rival spy gave a mocking laugh. ‘Better at killing innocents, and wallowing in their final suffering. He is a devil, with no morals, who deserves to be removed from this life.’

‘We are all devils in our own way, Master Strangewayes, and you prove it by passing such harsh judgement on a fellow man, with no evidence, only hearsay and old wives’ gossip,’ Will said.

His attention was caught by a flash of ostentatious white brocade and lace as a man in a ram’s mask swaggered from the audience. ‘Your day has passed, Master Swyfte,’ the man boomed. He removed his mask to reveal himself as Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, in his own estimation the most handsome man at court. ‘Your master, Sir Robert Cecil, is proving a poor defender of the realm and a most unfortunate replacement for the sadly missed Sir Francis Walsingham. His spies ... your companions, sir! ... have failed time and again to win an advantage for England in Spain, and in Flanders.’

‘Your analysis, as ever, is passionately voiced, sir,’ Will said with a bow, ‘though I fear not all the details of our great successes have been brought to your attention.’

With a fixed smile, Essex held Will’s gaze for a long moment, searching for any hint of the disrespect he knew was there. ‘You would do well to study Tobias here, Master Swyfte. He is the future,’ he said with a hearty laugh, clapping his red-headed favourite on the shoulder.

Strangewayes grinned.

Will could feel Carpenter and Launceston bristle beside him. ‘I have always said Master Strangewayes is a lesson to us all.’

Sensing that his authority was close to being undermined, Essex grunted. Flashing Will a guarded look, he replaced his mask and strode back into the audience.

The black-garbed spy stepped past Carpenter, and with a flourish brought his blade under Strangewayes’ sword, flicking it away from Launceston. ‘If you wish to fight, then let’s have at it.’

Uneasy now he had lost the upper hand, the rival spy glanced around and saw the rows of masked faces turned towards him. Slowly, he lowered his sword, then sheathed it. ‘My master was correct. Your time has passed, Master Swyfte,’ he sniffed, pretending he was bored with the confrontation. ‘England no longer needs you. And if you do not see the truth in that statement now, you soon will. Come, lads.’ He turned on his heel and pushed through the audience with his two men close behind.

Will sheathed his sword. ‘You have a knack of finding trouble in the most unlikely places, Robert.’

‘Is this what it has come to?’ Unable to contain his bitterness, Carpenter stalked around them, his fists bunched. ‘We fight among ourselves while England slowly falls around us?’

‘These are dark days, indeed. And they could grow quickly darker if we do not uncover the threat that may lie within these walls.’ Will held a hand out to the Earl. ‘Robert, there is still no sign of Kit?’

‘The doormen say Marlowe paid a brief visit earlier this day, wearing a hood to hide his identity. He stayed only a short while, and gave new directions to the players before departing.’ Launceston’s voice was so quiet it was barely audible under the buzzing of the audience.

Will felt a deep foreboding. ‘Speak to the players,’ he ordered. ‘Find what Kit did here this day and why he left in such a hurry. Quickly, now!’

CHAPTER TWO

‘IF YOU SEE CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE ANYWHERE IN THIS THEATRE, or hear a whisper of his voice, you come to us. Do you understand?’ Carpenter growled. He shook the nodding stagehand roughly for good measure and flung the lad to one side. The youth scrambled away backstage, casting fearful glances at the two spies.

‘The playwright is not here. I can feel it in my bones,’ Launceston said in his whispery voice, looking across the sunlit audience in the yard from the shadows at the side of the stage.

‘He is probably drunk in some stew or other and we, as always, are wasting our time,’ Carpenter grumbled, itching the scars that marred his face.

A black-haired young woman in a plain white mask stepped lightly up. Plucking off her disguise, she laughed, her sharp blue eyes gleaming. ‘Why are you always so gloomy, Master Carpenter?’ she teased, folding her hands behind her back and leaning forward so her nose was only a hand’s-width from the spy.

‘Alice, I am working,’ the scarred man began, a light smile rising to his lips unbidden. He still found the sensation unfamiliar, yet pleasing.

‘This is an evening for entertainment, not swords and scowls. Do you like my dress?’ The young woman showed off her pale green bodice and skirt. It was plain compared to the lavish dresses of the other women, but it was all a kitchen maid could afford.

‘It is beautiful, as are you, but you must return to your friends.’

With a theatrical sigh, the young woman twirled around, casting one teasing look at her love over her shoulder before replacing her mask and disappearing into the crowd.

Carpenter watched Alice go, unable to believe that a woman so warm and generous could have any affection for a man like him. If pressed, he would admit that he did not deserve her. But she was with him nonetheless.

Realizing Launceston was studying him, the spy scowled and said, ‘What are you looking at, you elf-skinned giglet?’

‘It is difficult to be certain, but it would appear to be a lovesick jolt-head,’ the Earl replied dispassionately.

Waving an irritated hand at his companion, Carpenter turned backstage, but the pallid man grabbed him by the shoulder. ‘You will get yourself killed, and the girl. The business of spies demands dedication and concentration. There is no place in it for a woman.’

Carpenter threw off the hand. ‘Then it is good that I am about to leave this miserable profession,’ he snapped.

‘Leave?’

‘It is my intention to marry Alice.’

‘And do what? Become a chandler, or a draper, or sell eggs in the market? You are spoiled for the life that others lead.’

‘We deserve our chance at happiness, like any other man or woman,’ said Carpenter, jabbing a finger at his friend.

Launceston remained unsettlingly calm. ‘You are not like other men. How many have slit a throat, skewered a heart, hanged, strangled, eviscerated, and lopped off limbs? How many—’

‘Be still.’ The scarred man seethed, long-held resentments bubbling to the surface until he could contain them no longer. ‘For five years now, I have tried to hold your demons in check. That hellish fever! When I see the light in your eyes, my heart is crushed with despair, for I know that I will soon be dragging you away from some drunken man, or some doxy, or a lady of the court even. Boys. Priests. Merchants. Sailors. When your dagger is gripped so that your knuckles are white, I know the madness is upon you.’

‘I know.’ His pale face blank, the Earl glanced around, half listening.

‘I have seen blood ... so much innocent blood.’ The bleak memories tumbled over themselves. ‘That poor girl near the Tower. That butcher ...’ The scarred man shook his head. ‘I could not tell him from his wares.’

With mounting desperation, Carpenter saw Launceston eyeing another stagehand dragging a box towards the tiring house, and knew his companion saw only the pulse of blood in the artery, the shape of the skull in the cheekbones, the gleam of organs revealed to air.

‘But they all lived, John. You saved them all. And you have saved me,’ the Earl murmured.

Carpenter felt desolate. Out of friendship, he had stepped in to keep Launceston from destroying himself without realizing the true price he would have to pay. That act had consumed his life, his every thought; watching, cautioning, knowing that if he ever failed, his conscience would be scarred by the death of an innocent. Launceston’s burden had become his burden, and he could bear it no more. Yet, God help me, I have to. For if not me, who?

The Earl continued to watch the stagehand, unaware of his friend’s turmoil.

So much sacrifice and it was not even noticed. His rage now gone, Carpenter could not meet Launceston’s eye. ‘No more, Robert. I am spent.’

‘Then what is to become of me?’

Carpenter heard no emotion in the Earl’s voice, no regret or self-pity, only a baffled child trying to make sense of a parent’s decision. With an exhausted sigh, he replied, ‘You will find a way, Robert. All that I have done has taken its toll on me, but it is meaningless to you. You are broken inside. You need no one. You survive. The rest of us ... we need friends, warmth, love.’

‘It means a great deal to me,’ the sallow man said in the same neutral tone he used when choosing wine or beer with his meal.

The spy looked his companion in the eye, and gave a weary smile and nod. ‘Of course. Now, let us find answers and put Will’s mind at rest.’

Slipping backstage to the tiring house, the two men found the players putting on their make-up and costumes. One man wore ram’s horns, his eyes ringed in black beneath cruel eyebrows. ‘You,’ Carpenter demanded, pointing. ‘What are you?’

‘The devil. Mephistophilis,’ the ferociously made-up man stuttered. ‘Who are you?’

‘Quiet, you common-kissing bum-bailey.’ Carpenter grabbed the devil by the undershirt. ‘I would know about the man who puts words in your mouth.’

‘Kit Marlowe?’

‘The same. He was here earlier?’

The player nodded, futilely looking for support from his fellows.

Launceston leaned in to the unsettled man and whispered in his ear, ‘What are you hiding from us?’

‘Nothing, truly. Master Marlowe was eager to make some final changes, that is all. It is not unusual. He places great weight upon small detail. But ... but he was not himself.’

‘How so?’

‘He slipped into the Rose in cloak and hood and revealed his presence to us only at the last.’

Launceston and Carpenter exchanged a look. ‘What small details did he attend to?’ the scarred agent asked. ‘Show us.’

Reluctantly, the player led the two spies to the side of the stage. Keeping out of sight of the audience in the yard, the man in the devil’s costume indicated a magic circle painted in red on the stage. ‘Master Marlowe insisted on changes to yon design. New symbols etched around the outside of the circle. The marks already there served their purpose, in my opinion, but who can divine the mind of a great man like Christopher Marlowe?’

The Earl studied the markings. ‘The playwright came here in a manner that suggests he did not want to draw attention to himself,’ the pale-faced spy mused. ‘Yet all he did was alter a few scribblings on the boards? Do you take us for fools?’

The player recoiled from Launceston’s unwavering stare. ‘No, please stay your hand! I cannot pretend to look into his mind. Never had I seen him in such a mood. When I encountered him backstage, I took such fright. His eyes were wide with terror, his face so drained of blood he looked like a ghost. As if he feared the devil himself was at his back.’

CHAPTER THREE

‘WHERE ARE YOU, COZ? WHAT THREAT DID YOU UNCOVER?’ WILL muttered, unable to throw off his black mood of foreboding. From the wooden rail, he watched the garishly dressed players step on to the stage from the wings. The final golden sunlight of that May day shafted through the opening in the thatched roof, and he could smell the rose gardens that gave the theatre its name, and hear the evening birdsong in the awed silence.

In the shadowed upper galleries and in the sunlit yard, the audience stood rapt, unreadable behind their masks. Standing in the sunbeam centre-stage, a fat man with a bushy white beard and long white hair threw his arms wide and began to declaim in a dreamlike cadence. Will drifted with the words.

‘

Whereby whole cities have escap’d the plague

,

And thousand desperate maladies been cur’d?

Yet art thou still but Faustus, and a man

.

Couldst thou make men to live eternally

,

Or, being dead, raise them to life again ...

’

In the warmth of the evening, Will’s thoughts moved back in time, inexorably, to his love, Jenny, stolen from him that hot summer day as she made her way across the cornfield on the edge of the Forest of Arden. There one moment, gone the next. Taken by the eternal Enemy, the Unseelie Court, before his very eyes, to a fate the spy could barely bring himself to consider. His hand unconsciously went to Jenny’s locket which he always wore next to his skin, a symbol of his hope that one day he could put the terrible mystery to rest – for good or ill – and find some kind of peace.

Nathaniel appeared at Will’s elbow, gripped by the scene on stage where a grotesque devil towered over the protagonist Faustus. Men surreptitiously crossed themselves, women averted their gaze. The plague had made everyone more fearful of hell’s torments. Another of the perverse tortures in which Kit revelled, Will mused: promise the great and the good entertainment, and then make them afraid for their mortal souls.

‘The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus. This is a troubling play,’ Nathaniel noted. ‘Men selling their souls to the devil. Is this truly a subject for entertainment? I have never seen the like before. It could drive women mad. And men too, for that matter.’

Will watched the heavily bearded Faustus stalk the stage, demonstrating his arrogance to the audience. ‘Kit always has something of import to say in his work. I fear this one may be more personal than his others, however.’ Will had been concerned about his friend’s state of mind in recent days. The work they did had been eating away at Marlowe for years, but in the last few weeks the playwright had been taking time away from the people he knew. Though all writers were prone to black moods, Kit’s spirits had never been darker.

‘These players are not as good as Edward Alleyn’s men. They bark their lines as if they hail fellow sots outside a stew,’ Nathaniel commented dismissively.

Will listened to the colourfully attired player boom his lines to reach the back of the audience. ‘There are few players of quality left in London with the plague rampant and the theatres closed,’ he said. ‘Alleyn has taken Lord Strange’s Men and some players from the Admiral’s Men on a tour of the country to make ends meet. Kit must make do with the dregs.’

Glancing around, Nathaniel hissed a warning. Will followed his assistant’s nod to where the audience was being parted by three men, two without masks, the third wearing the face of an angel. Gowned in black velvet, the man removed the mask with a flourish to reveal the face of the spymaster Sir Robert Cecil, a small, hunchbacked man with intense, dark eyes that held a sly intelligence. With him were Robert Rowland, tall and slender with a face like an unmade bed who oversaw the secret service’s complex files, and Sinclair, a saturnine former mercenary who never left Cecil’s side. A head’s-height above his companions and with the broad shoulders of country stock, Sinclair glared at Will.

The agent cursed under his breath, frustrated at this un-welcome distraction from the threat he sensed near to hand.

‘Fitting, no?’ Cecil indicated the angel mask and then gestured to the devil on the stage. ‘Come.’

With a speed and strength that belied his disability, the spymaster pushed his way through the audience to the rear of the gallery where they could talk without being overheard. The Queen teased Cecil with the nickname Little Elf, but Will knew the man’s sharp mind had helped him maintain power at court ever since his father, Lord Burghley, had installed him as secretary of state after Sir Francis Walsingham’s death. Clasping his hands behind his back, the short man stood with all the gravity of someone possessed of an ambition that far exceeded his stature.

‘I have news of some import that may impact upon your work in the near future, Master Swyfte. Intelligence comes to us from France. Henri de Navarre is close to converting to Catholicism, encouraged by Gabrielle, his whore, the Duchesse de Beaufort et Verneuil,’ Cecil announced, his head cocked back in a supercilious manner.

‘A Catholic!’ Rowland exclaimed, plucking at his eggshell-blue and yellow doublet in distress. ‘Are we to be isolated completely?’ His high-crowned hat only drew attention to his long, crumpled face.

Cecil paid his file-keeper no heed, but said dismissively, ‘Her Majesty will resent it, but religion only matters insomuch as it drives politics.’

‘Yet it still has the capacity to draw fresh blood,’ Will noted a little more sharply than he intended.

Cecil fixed a mistrustful eye on his agent. Will resisted the urge to respond. The Little Elf was more concerned with his own advancement at court than with the men who risked life and limb for him, and often seemed to suspect his charges more than the enemies they faced.

‘It was English troops and a fortune from our coffers that helped Henri win his kingdom. This is betrayal,’ Rowland continued, his cheeks flushed with passion.

‘It could work in our favour,’ Will mused. ‘Henri de Navarre is clever. Such a move would shift the balance of power in the Catholic League, and he could prove a strong, friendly rival to curtail the ambitions of Philip of Spain.’

Rowland stopped wringing his hands at Will’s assurance, and bowed his head in reflection. But Sinclair loomed over the smaller man’s shoulder and growled, ‘Still, we are beset from many quarters. The situation in Ireland is a concern.’

Cecil nodded, his gaze raised to the rafters a hand’s-width above Sinclair’s head. ‘Hugh O’Neill cannot be trusted. He professes loyalty to the Crown, but he builds his own power slowly. He will be trouble, mark my words. And the people of Ireland already hate us. But where are the results I need, Master Swyfte? Should I dispose of all the spies I have and find a better crew?’

Will took a moment to contain his ire, and then said calmly, ‘Some men complain of poor resources and little support, Sir Robert. Others that they have been abandoned in the midst of dangerous waters. It is hard to spy when you feel you stand alone.’

‘You know I must keep a close eye on our coffers, sir. The Earl of Essex continually looks for ways by which he may criticize the work we do, and he has already spoken to the Queen about our profligacy. We must all cut our cloth accordingly in these difficult times.’ The Little Elf gave a patronizing smile which fell away quickly when he caught sight of his gleaming rival, clad all in white, with a smirking Tobias Strangewayes at his side.

‘Damn him,’ Cecil whispered. ‘What mischief is he planning now?’

‘Essex seeks to undermine our work at every turn,’ Sinclair growled, glowering at the two men. ‘In these times no one can be trusted. We are beset by enemies on all sides. Across Europe, in the towns and villages of England and, yes, even in the court itself. There are spies everywhere, spreading lies and deceit. Where once this great land was filled with bravery, there is now only sweat, and doubt, and fear.’

And we cannot even trust our own masters any more, Will thought bitterly. His relationship with the old spymaster, Walsingham, had always been tense, but now it seemed like a golden age.

‘Are you enjoying Kit’s work?’ he asked. He cupped his hand to his ear, pretending to listen to the players’ words. ‘It tells of a man surrounded by devils.’

Cecil’s eyes flashed. ‘Do not speak to me of Marlowe. He can no longer be trusted.’

Will fought to control a flush of anger. ‘Kit has always been a faithful servant,’ he said as calmly as he could.

‘He is consumed by his weaknesses. Drink. Gold. And the unnatural desires he takes no pains to conceal. He has passed his point of usefulness.’ Beside Cecil, Sinclair nodded his agreement. Rowland looked away, pretending to be intrigued by the play.

The loud declaiming of the players rose up from the stage below.

‘

Then fear not, Faustus, to be resolute

,

And try the utmost magic can perform

.’

The words were followed by the clatter of iron and wood to signify thunder.

Will studied Cecil to see if this was another barb to prick a response. His master’s face gave nothing away. ‘I know Kit has been reporting to the Privy Council every day,’ he said. ‘Is the council to proceed with the charge of blasphemy?’

The secretary looked around the sea of colourful masks, either ignoring the spy or seeking some platitude that would deflect Will’s question.

Laced with fear, a cry rang out from the stage.

Cecil, Sinclair and Rowland all started, and jerked their heads towards the rail. The scream soared higher and was then swamped by a rising tide of panic from the audience. All around the gallery, the crowd surged forward to get a better view of what lay below.

‘What is happening?’ Rowland exclaimed. Sinclair had already disappeared into the mass of bodies.

‘No player ever acted that well,’ Will shouted above the clamour.

Leaving Cecil behind, the spy shouldered his way to the rail and peered down the well of the theatre. The day’s light was fading rapidly, the sky turning cerulean, and all around the yard and stage, lanterns now glowed a soft gold. The flickering light illuminated the pale faces peering down from the packed upper tiers, which were cloaked in dense shadow.

In the yard, a wave of bodies crashed towards the doors that had been locked to prevent curious commoners wandering in from the plague-ravaged city. Screams and cries became one constant shriek. A man in a harlequin mask shouldered his way through those ahead of him, regardless of status or gender. A woman with a now-tangled mane of grey hair hooked her fingers and raked and spat like a frightened cat. The surging mob crushed a lady-in-waiting against one of the timbers. An elderly man as thin as a sapling disappeared beneath the trampling feet. Across the yard, the masks came off. Will saw terror in the features of some, confusion in others. The cause of the tumult was not clear.

Nathaniel arrived at his side.

‘Nat, there will be disaster here.’ Will watched the infection of fear spread across the audience. ‘Find Master Henslowe or one of his associates. The doors must be opened immediately.’

In the upper gallery, bodies pressing forward to witness what was transpiring below pinned Will against the rail. Fighting his way to the stairs would take too long, he knew. With a jab of his elbows, he dragged himself out of the mass and up on to the rail, where he balanced on the balls of his feet. Pointing at him, a woman cried out in alarm. From his precarious position, he had a brief impression of the dizzying drop into the pit of heaving bodies below.

Glancing back across the sea of heads in the upper gallery, he accepted the truth: there was no way to go but down.

Steeling himself, the spy made a graceful pivot and grasped one of the rose carvings on the timber column. His cloak billowed in the updraught from the hot yard. Knuckles white, he clung on to the carving, praying that Henslowe’s carpenters had done a masterful job. Blood pumped in his head. Will allowed himself one look down into the depths, and then felt around for a foothold on the carving below.

His leather shoe slipped on the polished wood, and caught, just. The drop pulled at him.

Then, through the cacophony of screams below, a single cry rang out clear: ‘The devil is here! The devil!’

CHAPTER FOUR

WILL SWUNG DOWN THE TIMBER POST FROM CARVING TO CARVING and dropped the final few feet to the now-deserted yard in front of the Rose’s stage. On it, a knot of players huddled in fear. Leaping up to them, the spy grabbed the huge-bellied, white-bearded man who played the lead role, Faustus, and shook him alert.

‘What caused this outcry?’ Will demanded in a cold, authoritarian tone.

In the stage’s lantern light, the make-up that made the player’s features stand out to the upper galleries transformed him into a grotesque – white skin, red lips and cheeks, dark rings around his eyes.

‘The devil—’ the player croaked, barely audible above the shouting audience crowding towards the doors.

With his fist gripping the neck of the costume, Will shook the man roughly once more. ‘No superstition. Keep a clear head. What was seen?’

A young, smooth-cheeked man stepped forward, his hair tied back ready for the wig that would transform him into the spirit of the beautiful Helen of Troy. ‘I saw it,’ he declared in a clear voice that belied the terror in his eyes. He indicated the magic circle inscribed on the boards, surrounded by anagrams of Jehovah’s names, astrological symbols and ancient sigils. ‘When Faustus completed his incantation to summon the devil Mephistophilis, in the presence of Lucifer, a second devil did appear. But this was no man! He ... it! ... wore no make-up!’

Faustus gripped his head, reeling. ‘The devil was summoned here this night to torment us for speaking his name, and making a mockery of his dark majesty!’

‘There are devils aplenty in this world to worry me first before I turn my attention to Hob. Now, good lad, which way?’ Will glanced around the empty yard.

The young player pointed backstage.

Faustus caught Will’s arm. ‘He will take your soul,’ he said in a tremulous voice.

‘If I still have one to give.’ Drawing his rapier, Will jumped back to the mortar floor and slipped along the side of the stage to a small cluttered area with a space for the players to await their cue, heavy with the smells of paint, chalk and make-up. Timber frames, winches, painted scenery, and the artefacts used to make sound effects looked strange and unsettling in the half-light.

Watching the shadows for signs of movement, Will edged beyond the backstage jumble. He found himself in a walkway leading past the tiring house to a series of small chambers used for storage or recreation, places where the players would game with dice or cards while waiting for their moment on the boards. The backstage area was still. Yet he noticed it was unaccountably colder than the rest of the hot, crowded theatre, and an unpleasant smell hung in the air. Brimstone.

If this is a trick, it is designed well to tug at our fears, he thought.

He glanced into the first room on his left. The stub of a single candle guttered on the floor in the far corner, its flickering light revealing row upon row of costumes in emerald and crimson and sapphire, as well-made as the finest court clothes to cope with the wear and tear of multiple performances. A pair of intricately constructed wings of goose feathers hung from the ceiling, like an invisible angel taking flight.

A whisper rustled somewhere ahead in the gloom of the walkway, the words unclear.

Will’s breath caught in his throat. With a fluid movement, he stepped into the costume room just as a shadowy presence emerged from a room three doors ahead. He remained still, his breathing measured, the tip of his sword resting on the floor so it made no noise when he moved.

Soft footsteps came to a halt, and Will pictured whoever was there waiting outside the room. He heard a low growl, like one of the beasts in the Queen’s menagerie.

From that inhuman sound, Will tried to imagine what stood in the walkway, but nothing came to mind that made any sense to him. The devil, the player had said, gripped with fear of whatever he had witnessed. Will remained calm, despite the pull of age-old superstitions. He had faced many men, and many things, that had been called devils and he had held them all to account.

The rumbling sound ebbed and flowed. The echoes suggested the intruder was turning his head, looking up and down the walkway.

The spy tightened his grip on the hilt of his sword, his muscles taut. The blood pulsed in his head, the familiar rhythm of his life, the music of impending death.

After a moment, the footsteps padded away. Will waited a few heartbeats and then stepped out into the shadowy walkway. He glimpsed a figure disappearing around the edge of the backstage, too indistinct in the gloom to tell if it was devil or man. Silently, he followed, keeping close to the wall, and low.

When he turned along the rear of the stage, he came up hard. The figure waited for him. Instinctively, Will swept his sword up ready for a fight before he had even registered the identity of his opponent.

It was Jenny. His long-lost love.

The spy reeled from the shock. Long-dammed emotions flooded up, his incomprehension washed away by the plangent yearning of all those desperate years without her, followed immediately by a pure joy that he was seeing her again, not a hazy, half-formed memory, but Jenny, really and truly there. He lowered his rapier, his lips silently forming her name.

She looked exactly as she had done the last time he saw her all those years ago, when she had disappeared from his life, in full view, in that Warwickshire cornfield on that hot summer day. When she had walked out of life and into mystery. Still wearing the same blue dress, the colour of forget-me-nots. Her hair still a lustrous hazel, tumbling across her shoulders, her features pale and delicate yet filled with strength of character and intelligence.

Questions flashed through Will’s mind, each one dying in the heat of her glorious return.

‘Jenny,’ he murmured. The word fell close to him with the dull resonance of a pebble dropped on wood.

The woman held out a hand to him, and he wanted to feel her fingers in his more than anything in the world; it was all he had thought of, for years, since that awful day.

Sheathing his rapier, Will stepped towards his love, unable to take his gaze from her face. All around him, the world fell into shadow until there was only the moon of her presence, drawing him in.

Jenny’s face remained still and calm. Will watched her lips for the familiar ghost of a wry smile, but it was not there.

‘Speak to me,’ he whispered.

And then Will looked deep into his love’s eyes. They were as black as coal from lash to lash, not the green eyes of his Jenny; devoid of any of her warmth, empty of all her love and her compassion. These were the eyes of a devil. In them, Will saw his own pale, desperate face reflected, and he realized he had been tricked. But there was no time to feel the bitterness of hope dashed, or the anger of the cruel blow that had been struck at him. The hands of Jenny-that-was-not-Jenny clamped on the sides of his head and pulled him in until those black eyes were the only thing he could see. His vision swam, and any thought he had of fighting free was washed away. With barely a murmur of protest, he tumbled into deep waters that were beyond his understanding.

He stands under the cold eye of the full moon. Pearly mist drifts across the silver grass of a meadow, the swirling snowy tufts parting to reveal a sable slash of woodland in the distance. Glancing up the slope of the grassland, Will sees a scarecrow silhouetted against the white orb of the moon, its angular form topped by a wide-brimmed hat. He thinks that this chiaroscuro world is not England, perhaps Scotland, or the Low Countries, though he does not know why he feels that.

The scarecrow troubles him, oddly. Will has passed many like it, rough figures made from a timber frame and straw-stuffed old clothes, but this one feels like something more. It feels, he decides with a note of mounting dread, like the judge of all his life.

In a dreamlike state, the spy draws closer to the stick figure. The shadow thrown by the brim of the hat cloaks the face. Though his heart pounds wildly with dread, he cannot look away. The dirty undershirt is tied at the waist by a piece of cord, the hem flapping in the night breeze. Straw hands poke out from the sleeves of the outstretched arms. Obliquely, Will thinks it looks like a crucifixion under the cruel judgement of the god of the fields. These feelings, this experience, are not his, he knows.

Though every fibre tells him to turn away, Will has to see. He peers into the dark beneath the hat’s brim. A pair of staring eyes gaze back, wide with terror. But there is no mouth, and it cannot voice the agonies of its dreadful existence. The spy finds those eyes chillingly familiar, and with mounting horror he feels that he is looking at his good friend Kit Marlowe, trapped there.

Pleading for help.

Reeling backwards, his heart pounding fit to burst, the spy whirls to see he is not alone. Moving steadily out of the drifting mist across the meadow are indistinct figures, like shadows on a moonlit pond: five, ten, more. As the strangers take on more substance, he feels a palpable sense of threat. Their clothes echo the cut of long-gone times, bucklers, belts and breeches all glistening with mildew as if buried long underground. They draw nearer.

The Unseelie Court, the great supernatural Enemy who used to torment all England, stealing babies from cribs and luring unwary travellers to their underhill homes.

One of the figures clutches a staff. He is of indiscernible age, his cheeks hollow, dark rings under his icy eyes. The skulls of small rodents and birds have been braided into his long, straggly gold and grey hair. Green robes marked with strange symbols in a gold filigree are caught in the moonlight.

Will remembers his first glimpse of this strange being, on a warm night deep on lonely, haunted Dartmoor. Deortha is the Unseelie Court’s equivalent of Elizabeth’s adviser Dr Dee, a keeper of secret knowledge, perhaps a black magician, Will cannot be sure. But dangerous, certainly, as are all the Enemy. The figures want him dead for what he has discovered here; for what he is about to discover.

Turning, the spy runs. Terror strips his wits bare. Careering down the meadow, he plunges into the mist, glancing back to see the shimmering figures loping hard on his trail. There is no escape, he thinks. They will never stop now he has seen.

The world shifts around him, the grassland folding in on itself, and Will is now racing through a dark place, stone walls, low ceiling, the throb of a hammer on an anvil beating out the rhythm of his heart. Screams ring in the distance, throats torn in agony. The suffocating heat of a furnace sears his flesh. It is hell, it is hell, and he is trapped.

The spy runs into a wide chamber where a brazier burns with a dull, red light. And there horror floods through him as he sees ... he sees—

Convulsively ejected from his vision, Will fought back a flood of nausea and staggered against the wall. The dream-scene in the meadow burned into his mind.

The scarecrow, alive yet not. That hellish underground. What had he seen?

Standing still in the gloom, Jenny observed him with those cold, black eyes, a perversion of the woman he loved. Sickened by the sight, he felt his disorientation slowly turn to anger. Will could recall the touch of her hand, and her lips, he could remember the exact note of his feelings the last time they lay together on the edge of the Forest of Arden, all as if it were yesterday. He could only imagine what lay behind the mask of the face he saw in front of him.

‘What was the meaning of the vision?’ he spat.

Jenny continued to watch him, as if her silence were answer enough.

‘Was it intended for me? Why do you appear in the form of Jenny?’ He staggered forward, drawing his rapier. ‘What are you, truly?’

Caught in the grip of those terrible eyes, Will’s head swam and his vision blurred. When his sight cleared, he saw the figure in front of him falling into shadow, or perhaps it was as if the dark was rising up like a flood tide. In mounting desperation, he thrust with his sword, but the blade met no resistance.

As the sharp brimstone odour faded, Will found himself alone in the backstage walkway. Caught up in a whirlpool of confused feelings, he raced along behind the stage, calling out Jenny’s name. He knew it was not his love, yet he could not bear to lose her again.

But it was too late. She was gone.

CHAPTER FIVE

On his knees, Nathaniel forced his way among the feet of the heaving audience. Boots cracked against his head, his back, his hips, stamped on his fingers. Just when he thought he would have the life crushed from him, he scrambled out and lurched up against the plaster at the rear of the upper gallery, sucking in a huge gulp of breath. Struggling bodies hurled him back and forth, as if he was caught in the wash of a stormy sea.

Clawing his way to the stairs, the young assistant was struck by the roar of mayhem rising up from the lower levels. What could terrify them so? With plague, impending war, famine among the poor and bodies piling high in the streets, he would not be surprised if the devil really did walk the streets of London.

Nathaniel threw himself down the timber steps two at a time. Bodies slammed him against the walls, spun him round, crushed him so that he could not draw air into his lungs. Panic gripped him, but Will had given him a job to do. At the foot of the stairs a dense mass of people were crushed around the door, their cries ringing so loudly it made his ears ache. Against the wall, three women and a man slumped like rag dolls, eyes shut, but still the press continued.

How was he supposed to open the doors when he couldn’t get near them? His master seemed to take perverse delight in giving him impossible tasks.

Nathaniel yelled for calm until his throat was raw, but the shouts and curses drowned his voice. Red-faced men sputtered or roared, eyes swelling with fear, the women caught up with the furious flow. Pressed against the wall near him, one woman in a corn-coloured dress grew white, her eyes fluttering shut.

A youth with a tuft of brown hair, one of Henslowe’s stagehands, juddered to a halt behind Nathaniel.

‘Help me!’ Nathaniel urged, throwing himself into the press of bodies. Dragging one man back, he shouldered two others to the side, ignoring their furious protests. Battered and buffeted, Will Swyfte’s assistant fought until there was space for the stagehand to join him. They each grasped an arm of the unconscious woman and hauled her along the wall and out on to the stairs.

Once he had seen the woman still breathed, Nat shouted, ‘We must open the doors or there will be deaths aplenty.’

‘I have the key, but there is no room to use it,’ the stagehand yelled in reply, glancing back towards the crush.

Nat gripped his shoulders and demanded, ‘There are more ways out of here? A stage door?’

‘Beyond that.’ The youth waved a hand at the heaving crowd.

Nathaniel grew anxious at the pounding of feet above his head. The audience in the upper galleries was surging towards the crush. An idea struck him. ‘The windows?’

‘You will break your neck if you attempt to climb from that height.’ The stagehand hunched over the prostrate woman, fanning her with his hands.

‘Nothing valuable, then.’ Nat snatched the key from the youth and drove himself back up the stairs, squeezing past the first trickle of what would soon become a deluge.

Dragging himself into the corridor that circled the perimeter of the first gallery, Nathaniel put his head down and kept close to the wall. Small, diamond-pane windows glittered along the Rose’s fourteen sides, the only source of natural light in the theatre’s gloomy interior beyond the central well above the stage and yard. Pressing his face against the glass, he peered out across the darkening landscape. It was a drop of about thirty feet to the chalk and stone path that circled the theatre. Horses grazed on the surrounding grassy common land, and beyond the remnants of the old rose garden that gave the theatre its name was a small orchard sprawling towards the grey, slow-moving river. The young assistant saw he was on the wrong side of the building to where he needed to be.

Fighting his way around the first-floor gallery, he found the going became easier as the flow of audience members slowed. At the third window, he glimpsed the silhouettes of the stews, inns and rough houses of Bankside. Candles were being lit in the windows. Near to the theatre was an old, thatched, timber-framed cottage that Henslowe had established as a brothel for his players and guests.

Nathaniel wondered if he could leap the gulf to the roof, decided it was madness, and continued to the front of the theatre where he found the window above the entrance. He threw it open. The cool late spring air swept in, laced with woodsmoke from the house fires and the stink of rotting refuse.

Below was a small thatched porch over the entrance, flimsy and easy to miss. The spiralling cries of distress carved through his doubts. He climbed into the window space. With a whispered prayer, he allowed himself one glance down to mark his course, then he gripped the window frame and dropped.

The small porch shattered, showering straw and shards of wood around the theatre’s entrance. Nathaniel slammed into the chalk and stone walkway. Winded and seeing stars, he shook the fog from his head. No broken bones. The porch had slowed his descent just enough.

An unfamiliar woman loomed over him. Her hair was flame-red and she wore a bodice and skirt of black taffeta and gold. When he looked into her green eyes, Nathaniel felt he was a mouse before a cat, but she was sophisticated, definitely not one of the Bankside whores.

‘Let me help,’ she said with a hint of an Irish accent. She offered her hand.

As Nathaniel limped to his feet, he was enveloped by the sweet scent of her perfume. ‘Who are you?’ he asked.

‘A friend.’ The Irish woman took the key from his hand.

‘I am always wary of friends who announce themselves as such.’ The clamour on the other side of the door almost drowned Nathaniel’s words.

‘You are right to be cautious, for terrible deeds are planned this night.’ The stranger’s green eyes flashed towards him as she slipped the key into the hole.

‘What do you know?’ Nat asked, concerned.

‘That before this night is out, the Rose Theatre will be the scene of a murder.’ The woman turned the key. ‘And that the victim will be England’s greatest spy, Will Swyfte.’

CHAPTER SIX

WILL WAS SLAMMED AGAINST THE PLASTER WALL OF THE WALKWAY outside the tiring house before he even realized he was no longer alone. His head throbbed from the impact, jarring the last vestiges of his thoughts of Jenny. Before he could recover, strong hands grasped his shoulders and thrust him into the dressing room. He fell, sprawling across the hard mortar floor. Shattered bottles drove shards of glass into his flesh and drenched him in wine.

Ignoring the pain, he rolled on to his haunches, whirling towards the doorway. Looming out of the darkened walkway was a crimson face with black-ringed eyes and horns. It took only a moment for Will to see it was a mask, not the devil returned to destroy him but a man, as tall as Will and wrapped in a black woollen cloak. To his back, he had affixed the angel wings that had been suspended in the storage rooms. Silver glinted in the light of the single candle on the floor in one corner. The spy saw it was a blade gripped in his opponent’s right hand, not a cut-throat’s knife but one lovingly crafted for ritual purposes, with a slight curve to the tip, and a cleft for cutting ligaments. Black symbols had been inscribed into the steel.

The attacker lunged like a raven falling on a dead rabbit, thrusting the knife towards Will’s neck. Still shaky from his vision, he sluggishly pulled aside. The blade missed him by a finger’s-width, gouging a furrow in the wall plaster.

Will lashed out at his attacker’s groin. When the masked man danced away, the spy found a moment to leap to his feet.

‘You are confused,’ Will mocked. ‘A devil or an angel?’ He couldn’t see any sign of the masked man’s true identity, or guess the purpose of the attack.

From the yard in front of the stage came relieved chatter and the hearty laughter that is heard only after the release of fear. The audience was creeping back inside. The theatre manager loudly directed the throng to their positions, promising wonders to come.

Lunging forward, the knife-wielding foe drove Will back against the wall, and with a strength as demonic as his appearance, crushed the breath out of him. Gradually, the attacker increased the pressure. Fire burned in Will’s chest.

‘Will? Are you here?’ Nathaniel’s voice echoed along the walkway.

Distracted, the devil-masked attacker flinched. Will head-butted his opponent, smashing the mask from the top edge to just above the painted, grimacing mouth. As the man threw himself back, clutching at his crumbling disguise, Will glimpsed wild eyes filled with fury. He lashed out, trying to knock the mask away. It slid off further, revealing a hint of a familiar face, but before Will could fathom the man’s identity, he stumbled back, dragging the mask into place.

‘Will!’ Nathaniel’s concerned voice rang out closer.

‘Show yourself. I would know what name to carve upon your gravestone,’ Will growled, drawing his rapier.

Closing the rift in his mask with his left hand, the murderous foe bolted from the room.

Will pursued the man into the walkway, ignoring Nathaniel’s surprised cry. The angel wings shimmered in the half-light, creating the illusion that the devil-masked man was flying just above the mortar floor.

Ahead, excited chatter filled the passage. A group of five players in garish make-up and wigs hurried back to their rooms from the front of the stage, eager to return to their performance. The masked attacker darted in front of them into a corridor to his left. Barely noticing his drawn rapier, the players swarmed around Will. Roughly, the agent thrust them to one side. Turning left, he was confronted by a large door hanging open.

Will raced out into a small area of hard-packed chalk where the wagons were unloaded. The sweet-apple scent of horse dung filled the air.

Night had fallen, hiding whatever path the devil-masked man had taken from the Rose. In the distance, the lights of Bankside gleamed. Clouds obscured the moon, and the wind took away any sound of disappearing feet.

A breathless Nathaniel arrived at Will’s side. ‘Thank God you are alive,’ he gasped. The young man was flushed and his clothes were dishevelled from fighting his way through the milling crowd.

‘I was caught up in the business of devils and angels, Nat,’ Will responded, trying to make light. His heart ached with memories of Jenny, close enough to touch yet as far away as ever. His thoughts spun with the echoes of his vision, tinged with dread by the still-clear sight of the living scarecrow.

‘You were the intended victim this night.’ Nathaniel stepped in front of Will, his expression grave.

‘How so?’ Will asked.

Before his assistant could reply, a breathless Carpenter and Launceston raced out of the theatre door. The spy could see in the scarred man’s face that something was very wrong. ‘What is it?’ Will demanded.

Unsure how to reply, Carpenter’s gaze flickered to his emotionless companion for support. ‘Word has just reached us from Deptford,’ he stuttered. ‘A body has been found. Murdered.’

A silent scream of despair tore through Will’s head. He knew what was to come an instant before Carpenter spoke again.

‘Christopher Marlowe is dead.’

CHAPTER SEVEN

‘THEY’RE KILLING ALL THE DOGS. WON’T BE A HOUND LEFT IN ALL London soon,’ Henry Cressy muttered, flicking his whip to urge the death-cart horse into Candlewick Street. On the seat beside Cressy, Thomas Bailey tied his scarf tighter around his young, pockmarked face. In the summer heat, the first load of the day reeked even worse than usual after the bodies had been left in their houses overnight.

‘The Lord Mayor says the hounds disperse the plague,’ Thomas said. ‘Though in the Cross-Keys, they are now taking bets on which will die out first – men or curs.’

‘God punishes us for our indiscretions, but he will never see his creations gone.’ The carter, broad-shouldered and round of belly, still stank of the beer he had been drinking all night. After a moment’s drunken reflection, he added thoughtfully, ‘Although the plague’s pace has not slowed. Indeed, it grows faster. Entire streets are now empty around the Tower.’

‘I heard tell they are running out of men to watch the houses to make sure the poor, sickened souls do not leave, and now they are hiring boys and women. And the aldermen have called for yet another death-cart to ply this grisly trade.’

‘As long as I get my eight pennies a day, and my free beer, I care little.’ Cressy hunched forward, gripping the reins in his chubby fingers as he peered along the quiet street. The carters and merchants had found other routes to take them away from the vicinity of the plague pits.

To his right, Thomas eyed the constant, sinuous movement in the early morning shadows next to the walls of the timber-framed houses. Rats everywhere, filling the space that the tradesmen had vacated. The vermin had never had so much food to feast upon.

The wheels rattled across the ruts as Cressy guided the creaking cart towards the plot among the row of houses. It had once been a garden, but now the youth could see only brown earth. A black cloud of cawing crows enveloped the site, rising to the blue sky in a thunder of wings when the cart came to a halt. Tails lashing, the sleek rats scurried around the edge of the yawning pit.

‘Nearly full now,’ Cressy grunted, heaving his large frame from the seat. ‘The Lord Mayor’s men will need to find another plot to dig, if they can. Not much left in this here city.’

Even through his scarf, Thomas choked at the stench. His eyes watering, he levered himself from the cart while the older man ambled to the edge of the pit. A moment later, Cressy’s strangled cry rang out. At first, the youth thought the carter had tumbled into the grave, but with a hand clutched to his mouth, the fat man was staggering backwards, his gaze fixed on the dark hole.

Thomas ran past the stumbling man, slowing as he neared the pit.

What horrors has he seen?

Peering into the stinking grave, the youth thought his heart would stop. The shroud-wrapped bodies had moved. Blackened faces stared up at him, the stained linen torn away from the heads. Thomas remembered laying the corpses flat, but now they were in a jumble, some leaning against the muddy walls of the pit as if they had tried to climb out, others upended or sprawling in seeping piles.

Were the dead angry at their plight? Could they no longer rest in peace?

The youth crossed himself and whispered, ‘In God’s name, what monstrous thing has happened here?’

CHAPTER EIGHT

A SHAFT OF SUNLIGHT BLAZED THROUGH THE DIAMOND-PANE window on to the blanket-covered body. Around the head, the rough woollen shroud was stained brown, and more blood had spattered the dry rushes on the floor. A thick-set man in a shabby doublet tore bunches of fresh-picked rosemary, thyme and mint in a futile attempt to disguise the foul smells, but the corpse of Christopher Marlowe had lain in that cramped, hot room for a day and a half.

Will could not take his eyes off the dirty blanket, that simple, pathetic image telling him everything he feared about Marlowe’s life and his own future. He felt the loss more acutely than he would ever have imagined.

It was mid-morning on 1 June. Standing at the back of the chamber, which contained only a bed, a bench and a trestle, the spy eyed the sixteen men of the inquest jury crowding around him. They pressed scented kerchiefs to their noses, intermittently coughing and gagging, their eyes watering. Will identified the two Deptford bakers, George Halfpenny and Henry Dabyns, florid and sweating, and Robert Miller, who kept Brook Mill on the road between Deptford and Greenwich, a serious, ascetic man. Others were unknown to him, gentlemen and yeomen, mostly local, landholders and wharf owners.

Will had pushed aside all thoughts of the haunting vision of Jenny at the Rose and the baffling attack upon him. News of Kit’s death had struck him like the wash of an icy winter tide. For most of the night and the next day, he had been numb. His friend was gone. That was all that mattered.

Unable to contain himself any longer, a tall, thin man with silver hair opened the window and wafted the fresh air inside. Through the casement, Will now had a clear view of the sun-drenched garden of the lodging house of Mrs Eleanor Bull, ablaze with colour, the silver of sea lavender, the crimson of roses, the blue of forget-me-nots, with a row of unruly yews at the far end. The ringing calls of the merchants travelling along Deptford Strand drifted in, accompanied by the rumble of wheels and the neighs of the old nags that pulled their carts. In the distance Will could just hear the shouted orders of the men working in the great shipyards that sprawled along the Thames.

His attention returned to the black-robed man who faced the jury alongside the body. Wearing a gold medallion of office on a blue sash, William Danby was the coroner to the royal household, a gaunt man in his late sixties, who looked like he would be at home with the many bodies he encountered in his work. Will was surprised to see him in charge of Marlowe’s inquest; Danby would not normally trouble himself with what most would consider such a minor death.

When Danby pointed at the corpse, his thick-set assistant pulled back the blanket. With a sharp exhalation, the jury recoiled as one. Crusted blood and brains created a caul across Kit’s face. As the assistant measured the wound, Will covered his eyes for a moment, trying to focus on the detail of the murder as if it were some stranger that lay before him.

Could the playwright truly have died as the result of an argument over money, as everyone claimed? A tragic death, but meaningless? The spy could not believe that.

In the corner next to Danby stood the accused, Ingram Frizer, sullen, with heavy features and prematurely greying hair, a man of business with a penchant for speculating in property and tricking the naive out of their cash. His head had been bound with blood-stained rags to cover several wounds. As Will looked deep into Frizer’s face, he felt the spark of a slow-burning anger. Had the torch of a sensitive, passionate, talented soul really been extinguished by this man?

Standing alongside the accused were two other sullen men who had been present when Kit had died: Nicholas Skeres, at thirty a year older than Marlowe, lanky and shabbily dressed, a moneylender with a reputation even shadier than Frizer’s; and Robert Poley. Will knew him. Their eyes met briefly before the other man looked away. Strong and fit, he wore clothes of a finer cut and held his chin at an angle that suggested he required respect.

Poley was a spy.

For many years, the older man had worked for Will’s former master, Sir Francis Walsingham, yet he had also been a leading player in the criminal underworld of London. Like Marlowe, he played both sides. Unlike Marlowe, Poley enjoyed his work. Will had heard tell he was a master poisoner, as well as an informer and troublemaker among the Catholic plotters.

‘And what have you found?’ Danby said, in a deep, rumbling tone.

His assistant re-covered the body and stood up. ‘The dagger entered just above the right eye and pierced the brain, sir. One single stroke is all I see.’

‘Master Frizer. Step forward and give your account.’ Danby gestured towards the space in front of the jury.

Frizer shuffled forward, his hand springing to the painful wounds on his head. ‘The four of us met here at the house at about ten o’clock that day to discuss our business. We took lunch together and afterwards walked in the garden,’ he began in a low, wavering voice, his gaze darting across the faces of the jury. ‘At about six o’clock that evening, we came in and had our supper. Master Marlowe was tired and lay down.’ Frizer indicated the bed in the corner. ‘The three of us sat on the bench in a row, playing tables. I sat in the centre.’ He pointed to the backgammon board, the counters still in position, the dice rolled to a six. ‘Master Marlowe was in an irritable frame of mind. We argued about the sum of pence owed to Widow Bull for our food and drink that day. The reckoning was a small matter, but Master Marlowe became increasingly incensed and we exchanged malicious words. In anger, he leapt towards me, and with Master Skeres and Master Poley on either side, I could in no way take flight.

‘Master Marlowe snatched my own dagger from my sheath and struck me two blows with it.’ His hand went to his head wounds again and he winced. ‘I thought I would die. Master Marlowe was possessed with a terrible rage, and I could do nothing to protect myself but wrest the dagger from his hand. I struck out, unthinking, and the knife went in above his eye. He died instantly.’

Danby waited for the scribe to finish noting Frizer’s account before he said in a commanding voice, ‘It is to your honour that you neither fled nor withdrew yourself, and this is a matter which must be considered by the jury.’

‘Because I struck in defence of my own person, sir, and not to harm Master Marlowe. I would not. He was my friend.’ The accused gave a deep bow. Will could see the man’s hands were shaking so badly he had to clasp the one with the other.

The spy watched Frizer’s face for any hint of a lie. If he couldn’t prove that he had struck in defence of his own life, the accused would face death. Will accepted that the bandaged man must have been completely sure of his position not to flee the scene of the crime, or at least sure of the outcome of the inquest. But the coroner was experienced, and his reputation was strong. He had held the post for more than four years, with another fifty years of legal work behind him since he began his studies at the Inns of Court. He would not have been open to bribery, nor would he have ignored the slightest fact that threw the evidence into doubt.

Will listened carefully to the testimonies of Poley and Skeres. They both backed Frizer’s account, as would be expected. After only a brief deliberation by the jury, Danby formally announced the result: ‘That said Ingram Frizer had killed Christopher Marlowe in the defence and saving of his own life.’

Coughing and spluttering, the jury filed out of the hot chamber, glad to be away from the stench. Will allowed himself one last look at the form under the blanket, choosing to remember one night of joyful, drunken conversation in the Bull at Bishopsgate rather than the misery that had latterly haunted Kit. Stung with grief, Will bid his friend a silent farewell and then stormed into the flower-filled garden in search of answers.

Frizer, Skeres and Poley were already slipping around the side of the house, flashing concerned glances in Will’s direction. They flee troubling questions – the very sign of guilt, he thought with mounting anger.

‘Hold,’ the spy called. ‘I would have words with you three.’

Before Will could break into a run, Tobias Strangewayes stepped on to the path from the shade of a sweet-scented lilac. ‘Stay your hand, Swyfte. There will be no trouble here,’ the red-headed rival spy insisted.

Enraged, Will thrust Essex’s man to one side. ‘No one will stop me reaching the truth, least of all you.’

Spinning round, Strangewayes drew his rapier and leapt back into Will’s path. ‘I was warned that you would lose control of your wits when you witnessed your friend’s pitiful end. Then it falls to me to restrain the man who was – once – England’s greatest spy.’

‘Is this more of the petty jostling for power that your master plays with my master,’ Will blazed, snatching out his own blade, ‘or are you too involved in Kit’s death?’

Steel clashed.

‘The Queen will see she can no longer place her trust in Cecil’s men when they disrupt an inquest into the tawdry murder of an atheist,’ Strangewayes said, grinning.

Will saw red. Slashing to the right, he almost knocked Strangewayes’ blade from his grip. As Essex’s man struggled to bring his rapier up to parry, Will slashed to left and right in quick succession and then thrust his sword through his opponent’s defences. The tip of the rapier stabbed into the man’s doublet over his breast. The rival spy looked scared, unsure if Will would follow through.

Before the answer came, Will was knocked roughly to one side. Strong arms clasped him in a bear-hug that forced him to lower his blade. Strangewayes danced backwards, flushed with relief.

‘Calm yourself now, or Sir Robert will have one less spy in his employ,’ a voice hissed in Will’s ear. It was Sinclair, Cecil’s towering bodyguard. Beside him, dressed in a black, old-fashioned velvet gown, the archivist Robert Rowland shifted from foot to foot and looked as if he would rather be anywhere but there. His crumpled face was the only one that showed a hint of sadness at that morning’s grim events.

Seething, Will saw the moment had passed. Frizer, Skeres and Poley had already departed. The spy ceased his struggles until Sinclair released his grip, and then threw off the former mercenary. Will rounded on the three men. ‘Something is rotten here,’ he said, pointing a finger at the gathered group, ‘and I will not rest until I discover who truly killed Kit Marlowe, and why. And when I uncover the names of those involved, the reckoning will be in blood.’

Storming away, Will fought to contain the tide of anger that threatened to engulf him. As he shielded his eyes against the sun, he noticed Danby watching him, the coroner’s saturnine features a pool of darkness in the bright garden. His head held at an aloof angle, the dour man came over and gave a curt bow. ‘I am aware of your reputation, Master Swyfte. You have served the Queen and our country honourably.’

‘And I am aware of your reputation, sir. But I have some matters of concern about this inquest,’ Will replied in as calm a voice as he could muster.

Danby’s eyes narrowed, but he continued to smile politely. ‘Master Marlowe was your friend, was he not?’

‘We shared good times together.’

‘The verdict has been reached, Master Swyfte. There is no going back from it.’ Danby shook his head in an attempt at sadness that did not ring true.

Fighting back another surge of anger, Will took a step towards the other man. ‘There is more to the evidence,’ he stressed.

Unused to being questioned, the coroner flinched. ‘But you heard the evidence, sir. There is no doubt Master Frizer acted in defence of his own person.’

‘Except that Master Poley is a spy, known to me and to Kit. Two of the men in that room were spies, and I would wager there may well have been more.’ Will’s hand unconsciously went to his rapier but he snapped his fingers shut at the last moment, and hid them behind his back.

‘You suggest this is a matter of subterfuge, then? Some business of spies? Plots and conspiracies?’ Danby gave a sly smile that only made Will’s anger burn hotter.

‘I suggest only that there is more to this than meets the eye, as there always is in the world I inhabit.’ The pulse of blood in Will’s head drowned out the song of a thrush and the soft music of the breeze in the elms. His vision closed in until all he could see was the coroner’s supercilious expression.

‘That is not enough, Master Swyfte. In matters of law, only facts can be considered, not suppositions.’ Danby gave a shrug and began to walk towards the path back to Deptford Strand and his waiting coach. ‘The matter is closed. Master Marlowe’s body will be consigned to the earth this afternoon.’

Will recoiled. ‘So soon? No pomp or ceremony?’ Marlowe’s fame as a playwright would have excited the interest of many. Even in the desperate atmosphere of the plague-ridden city there should at least have been an adequate announcement so the crowds could gather, not to mention an invitation to dignitaries, a procession and a full service.

‘He is just a man,’ the coroner said.

Will was stung by Danby’s dismissive tone, adding insult to the raw emotion he already felt at his friend’s passing. Kit was being discarded by the authorities, despite his years of sacrifice and service to the Crown.

‘This is to do with the accusations of atheism?’ Will grabbed the coroner’s shoulder. Danby recoiled at the outrageous lack of respect. The spy didn’t care.

‘I would not know. I do not make these decisions. I only investigate—’

‘You answer to the people who make such decisions. In the circles in which you move you are privy to knowledge that is denied to the rest of us.’

Scared, Danby backed away a step.

‘Who took the decision to bury Kit without ceremony?’ Will pressed.

‘I cannot say.’

‘You do not know? Or you refuse to tell me?’

‘I ... I ...’ the coroner stuttered, his eyes darting.

‘Tell me,’ Will snapped.

A tremor crossed Danby’s face, the muscles twitching as if they could not decide which expression to sport. To Will’s astonishment, the coroner broke into a broad grin and then began to laugh. At first it was just a chuckle, but it rapidly transformed into a breathless bark. Yet Will could hear no humour in that sound and the coroner’s eyes were still scared and flecked with tears. A shadow of confusion crossed the man’s face as if he couldn’t understand his own strange response, and then, still laughing, he turned and almost ran across the garden to the path.

Will had never seen anything like it before. The Queen’s foremost coroner had acted like a madman, caught up in inappropriate emotions beyond his control. Was it fear of discovery? Fear of his masters? A passing lunacy?

Concerned, the spy made his way across the now-deserted garden. Before he reached the path, he glimpsed movement, high up on the lodging house. Spinning round, he looked up, shielding his eyes against the sun’s glare. Not even a bird flapped on the brown tiles, but Will was convinced he had caught sight of something large hunched on the edge of the roof, watching his passage.

Something inhuman.

CHAPTER NINE

THE FUNERAL PROCESSION ARRIVED AT DEPTFORD GREEN TO A chorus of hungry gulls sweeping low overhead. While the coffin rested at the lychgate, a young man stepped up to Will, glancing around, a sack clutched to his side. The spy recognized the red, tear-stained face.

‘Tom, I am sorry we meet again under these circumstances. We have both lost a good friend.’ Will went to shake the hand of Marlowe’s companion, but the man was racked by a silent, juddering sob of grief.

When he had recovered, Tom thrust the sack into Will’s hands. ‘Kit bid me give you this,’ he hissed. ‘I have spent two days searching for you, but you are hard to find.’

‘By design,’ the spy replied.

‘The last I saw of Kit, on the banks of the river near Baynard’s Castle at dawn, he ... he was not in the best of humour. He feared for himself ... feared that to be with me would bring about my death. I should ... I should have known. Helped.’ The young man swallowed noisily.

‘Do not punish yourself. We can never know what is to be.’

In one tearful look, Tom communicated more than words could ever express and then he hurried away along the street.

Puzzled, Will peered into the sack. A sheaf of dog-eared papers lay at the bottom. He shrugged, and found his attention drawn back to the coffin as the pall-bearers shouldered it once more.

‘Will?’ In her black mourning dress, Grace gently touched his sleeve, her eyes still red from crying. ‘We both loved Kit. He was a kind and gentle man, for all his troubles. But now I worry for you. His death has burned into your heart, and I can see you change by the moment. Do not let it harden you.’

Although her face was flushed with grief, Will could see elements of her sister, Jenny, in her stance, and once again he was transported back to that summer’s day when his love was cruelly snatched from his life. He put the thought from his mind.

‘Kit deserves justice,’ he responded, his expression grim. ‘I do not believe he received it at the inquest this morning, and this poor excuse for a funeral only adds insult. He deserved better. If those who used him while he was alive cannot find it within them to give him justice, then that duty falls to me. And I will seek it out in a much harsher manner than they ever would.’

The procession wound its way into the graveyard. The parish church of St Nicholas was solid and unremarkable. The final resting place of one of England’s greatest playwrights was an unmarked grave near the church’s north tower, and there a small group of men waited. Will was puzzled to see Thomas Walsingham, the second cousin of Sir Francis, stylish in black and gold, his lithe, powerful build that of a fencer. How could he have arrived from his home in Chislehurst so quickly, when the funeral had been announced only that morning? Will wondered.

He knew Thomas, a year older than the playwright, and wealthy, had been one of Marlowe’s patrons. He had also been a longstanding friend of Kit’s through their service in the spy network, and Kit had been staying on and off at Thomas’s house for most of the last month.

Walsingham nodded to Will and gave a sad smile.

As they gathered around the hastily dug grave, Will left Grace to be comforted by Nathaniel and joined Carpenter and Launceston.

‘There are too many spies in this affair for my liking,’ he whispered to the other two men. ‘Poley, who was there at Kit’s death. Now Walsingham.’

Launceston stared deep into the hole as though he were considering jumping in. ‘We are a loathsome breed. Worse than snakes,’ he replied in a bloodless tone.

Once the funeral was over, Will sent Carpenter and Launceston on their way and then paused by the grave to throw in a handful of the rich Deptford soil. Thomas Walsingham broke away from the small group of Marlowe’s acquaintances to join him.

‘This is a harsh accident,’ the patron said as he stared at the cheap coffin.

‘An accident? You believe it is so?’ Will replied in a cold voice.

‘Ingram Frizer did not mean to strike the killing blow. I have spoken to him at length, beyond the evidence he gave at the inquest. Poor Kit was like a wild thing, driven momentarily mad by the pressures of his double life.’

‘That seems like an easy answer.’

‘Frizer would not lie to me.’

‘You know him well?’

‘I am his master.’

Will flashed a look towards Walsingham, but the man’s expression was emotionless, his gaze fixed on the grave. The spy felt cold at the revelation of yet another hidden connection. ‘Do you know what business they gathered here in Deptford to discuss?’

Walsingham folded his hands behind his back and raised his face to the sun. ‘Not in the detail. Frizer told me it was mundane matters, of loans and debts, and some dealings in the unpleasant world they were all forced to inhabit. Nothing of import. This is more about Kit’s state of mind than what transpired in that room.’ His tone was reasonable, but something about it did not ring true to Will.

‘I have my doubts.’

‘Oh?’ The other man glanced at him askance.

‘Come. We are all taught to accept nothing is ever as it appears in our world.’ Will paced around the grave to face the other man across the dark hole.

‘True. But it is wise never to delve beneath the surface too publicly,’ Walsingham said with a dismissive shrug. ‘None of us knows who can be trusted. And that is worse now than it ever was when my cousin Sir Francis was spymaster. His poor replacement, Sir Robert Cecil, has ambitions, as does his rival, the Earl of Essex. Why, I would not be surprised if there were a civil war. Fought quietly and behind the scenes, in the manner of spies, of course.’

‘And which side would you be on?’ Will asked with a cold smile.

Walsingham’s own smile was a mask. ‘I am loyal to the Queen, as always.’

‘Perhaps the war has already begun.’ Will glanced towards the gravediggers waiting impatiently to fill in the hole.

‘Spies die all the time. No one cares.’ The other man plucked a piece of lint off his fine doublet. ‘Their work is all that is important, and it is noted in files and stored away, paid for in blood and often forgotten before the blood is dry. Do you not find that our work is all like one of Kit’s plays?’

‘How so?’

‘Declamatory statements, blood and thunder, words and images.’ Walsingham threw an arm into the air as if he were on stage. ‘Then the play ends and the audience goes home and life continues, and all that went before is forgotten. Do we pretend to ourselves that what we do has some meaning, when it is really just entertainment?’

Will pointed into the grave. ‘In entertainment, men do not end there.’

‘True. But Kit, like all who love art, knew that there is more to this world than the games we set for ourselves. We lose sight of what truly matters.’

‘Spoken like an educated man. Some do not have the luxury of such reflection, when their life is a daily struggle to stay one step ahead of the reaper,’ Will replied.

Walsingham laughed. ‘You have me there, Master Swyfte. I am fortunate, I know that. Still, I would think you miss the easy certainties of the time when Sir Francis oversaw these great affairs.’

‘He is gone, and we have all moved on. There is nothing to be gained by looking back.’ Will felt a brief pang at the irony of his statement.

‘There are some who may not agree with you. Sir Francis’ grave was defaced only the other day.’ The other man pursed his lips to show his distaste.

‘Oh? When?’

‘On the night before Kit’s death. Who would do such a thing?’

The question was rhetorical, but Will’s thoughts raced. Who would deface the grave of Sir Francis Walsingham, and several years after his death? Someone who knew him and the work he did, perhaps? That was a small group.

‘I must return home to Chislehurst,’ Walsingham continued. ‘Important matters call to me, and a clear head is required. This business saddens me, though. I will miss Kit greatly.’ He walked around the grave to shake Will’s hand. ‘I know he was important to you too. Kit always spoke of his good friend warmly. Do not let his death lie on you. He is in a better place now, and finally at peace.’

Will watched him walk through the gravestones to where his companions waited by the lychgate. Walsingham clapped his fellows across the shoulders as if he were on a jaunt to the nearest inn. There was no sign of the grief he professed.

‘Will?’ Grace questioned, taking his arm.

‘I would have one moment alone with Kit and then I will join you,’ Will replied gently. Her eyes moist, the woman nodded and made her way towards the lychgate.

A sudden breeze brought with it the stink of the Isle of Dogs and the sound of hammers from the shipyards. Will felt eyes upon him again. The gravediggers were already collecting their shovels and inspecting the pile of soil.

‘Leave me alone,’ Will snapped, looking into the dark hole in the ground. His grief felt like a rock on his back, his impotent anger a fire in his heart. As he tried to make sense of all that had happened, a faint movement in the heavy shadow along the church’s western wall caught his eye. A figure was watching the grave from beyond two ancient yews, carefully positioned to avoid being seen.

Slipping away from the graveside, Will circled the church along the eastern wall. Darting around the back of the squat stone building, he approached the watcher from behind. It was a woman in mourning dress, and from her flame-red hair he guessed it was the one Nathaniel had encountered outside the Rose.

Will approached silently until he was close enough to prevent her fleeing and then he said, ‘Do not be shy. If you wish to pay your respects, come closer.’

The woman let out a small cry and whirled, pressing herself back against the corbelled flint wall of the church. Her eyes flashed with recognition when she saw who had startled her.

‘You know me?’ The agent stepped closer so she could not slip by him.

‘Will Swyfte. England’s greatest spy. Who does not know you?’ Will heard clear Gaelic notes in her voice, but he couldn’t read the emotion behind her words. She raised her chin defiantly and brushed a stray wisp of hair from her pale forehead.

‘And yet you appear to know more than most. Like the time and place of my intended death.’ He leaned in close so their faces were only a hand’s-width apart. He could smell her heady fragrance, the notes of orange and cloves.

‘I came to the theatre to warn you. Would you have preferred I made no attempt to save your life?’ The woman seemed unthreatened by his forthright behaviour.

Will stared deep into her eyes, but couldn’t see any deception. She held his gaze with confidence; there was no pretence of coyness. He realized she was used to sustaining the attention of men. ‘You must think highly of me if you would go out of your way to save me,’ he said.

‘You think highly of yourself,’ she sniffed. ‘I would have done it for anyone.’

‘A charitable woman. How charitable would that be?’

‘My charity is only dispensed to needful cases. I sense you are never in want, Master Swyfte.’ Her shoulders relaxed against the hard wall, and a faint smile flickered on her lips.

‘We all find ourselves at a loss from time to time.’

She cocked her head wryly as if she saw something in his face that he hadn’t realized was there. ‘Then I would suggest you work on your swordplay in the privacy of your room, Master Swyfte,’ she breathed. ‘I hear you are regularly called upon to use your weapon, and it would not do to be found lacking in that area. Self-improvement is a virtue.’

Will grew tired of the game and said firmly, ‘Perhaps we should leave discussion of virtue to a later time. Will you give me your name?’

‘Margaret Penteney,’ she replied, so confidently that Will was convinced it was a lie.

‘You are here tending the grave of a family member perhaps?’

‘My business is my own, Master Swyfte.’

The spy took a step back. ‘Of course. But I am concerned for your safety. A woman abroad in Bankside, outside a theatre at night? That is not a safe place. Does your father or husband allow you to put yourself in such danger?’

‘You should thank me for so endangering myself to try to help you.’

‘And it is a happy accident that I am in a position to thank you, here in Deptford, so far from London,’ Will said sardonically.

‘We are not to know God’s plan, Master Swyfte.’

‘Not God’s, no. However, the plots and plans of men are of great interest to me. And women. How did you uncover the threat against my life?’ He allowed a hard tone to enter his voice, but the flame-haired woman still did not flinch.

‘I see and hear many things in my business.’

‘Which is?’

‘Will?’ Grace was standing at the corner of the tower with a hurt expression. She looked from Will to the woman who stood so close, they could have been involved in a lovers’ tryst.

‘Return to the graveside, Grace. I will be back soon,’ he said with a sharpness that he instantly regretted.

With a cold expression, Grace held Margaret’s gaze for a moment. The Irish woman gave her a smile that Will only ever saw women share among themselves; it circumscribed a position of strength.

Once Grace had gone, Will hardened. ‘Now. Your business.’

With a skip in her step, the flame-haired woman moved away from the wall into the warm sun. ‘I am a wife and I tend my home well, Master Swyfte. I only meant that as I go about my chores I keep my eyes and ears open to the gossip of my neighbours.’

‘And one of your neighbours threatened to kill me?’ Will mocked. The woman still gave no sign of lying, but he didn’t believe her. He had started to accept that she was as skilled at deceit as he was.

Will was puzzled to see her come to a sudden halt and the blood drain from her face. ‘I am innocent,’ she said in a whispery voice. The spy realized her widening eyes were looking past him to the yews.

A figure stood in the stark interplay of shadow and sunlight beneath the swaying trees, framed by ragged gravestones. The spy’s stomach knotted when he saw it was Jenny, followed by a moment of excruciating dislocation when he realized it wasn’t Jenny at all. Those same black, hateful eyes fell upon him as they had in the Rose Theatre.

Will sensed Margaret hurry away, but his attention was locked on the cruel imitation. He felt a sudden attraction, a part of him desperately trying to make up for the years of grief and yearning. But another part of him was repulsed, and the point where the two sides met left him sickened.

‘Is this it, then? I have my own devil now to torment me?’ the spy whispered to himself.

Drawing his rapier, Will ran into the dense copse of yews only to find that whatever had waited there was gone. Only a wisp of brimstone remained in the air to show it had ever been. But he could feel its black eyes on him even then, and a deep, chilling dread that was so tightly wound around him he was afraid it would never leave.

Will already understood what Marlowe was describing in the play he had half heard the other night at the Rose: to want and never gain was a special and very personal hell.

CHAPTER TEN

REACHING THE TOP OF THE ROPE, WILL HAULED HIMSELF SOUNDLESSLY over the battlements into the shadows of the walkway overlooking the western road out of London. Crouching, he peered along the wall to where the guard leaned against his pike under the glow of a gently swaying lantern. The man’s head nodded, and the spy heard the drone of juddering snores.

Easing the rope up, Will tested the grapnel was secure and then lowered himself down into the deserted Palace of Whitehall. He would have found it easier to gain access by hammering on the eastern gate to rouse the guards, but he didn’t want anyone to know he’d been there.

Slipping through the dark among the jumble of stone and timber-framed palace buildings, Will felt that he had spent the last two days trying to navigate sandbanks in the fog. He glimpsed meaning among the shifting strands of devils and murder and knife-wielding masked men, but it disappeared before he could tack a course towards it. One beacon remained clear, though: the Unseelie Court.

The scarecrow staring with Marlowe’s eyes. The pale figures pursuing him with lethal intent.

The empty palace with its ringing halls and blank windows was the wrong place to contemplate the stuff of nightmares. Even though the Queen and the court had long since fled London to escape the plague, Will felt he was being watched.

Creeping to the edge of a large cobbled courtyard, he let his eyes rise up the tall tower that stood at its centre. At the very top of the Lantern Tower, as it had always been known for no good reason that he could see, a faint green glow rolled and folded, like the lights people said they often glimpsed in the northern skies.

Will felt his stomach knot and an ache rise deep in the back of his head. The sole occupant of that tower burned so fiercely not even stone walls could contain her power.

Always alert, four steely-eyed guards in helmet and cuirass walked the courtyard, hands only an inch from pike or musket. The tower itself was filled with lethal traps, many newly installed, but it was the unseen defences that were the most deadly, Will knew. The court’s former alchemist, Dr John Dee, had ensured nothing could get in and the prisoner could never get out, for if that were to happen England would fall.

England’s guilty secret.

Few people knew the tower’s secret, only Her Majesty and a handful of her most trusted men. But Will had learned the truth, and it had eaten away at him for five years now.

Her protectors slaughtered, the immaculate, terrifying Queen of the Unseelie Court had been stolen in an act of grand betrayal during a convocation to discuss peace in the generations-long struggle between men and their supernatural foe. An uneasy truce was no use to a nation caught between the twin poles of fear and ambition, and Queen Elizabeth and her advisers had realized her forbidding counterpart could become the fulcrum of Dr Dee’s magical defences, a shield that could keep the great Enemy at bay for evermore.

Watching the green light wash out, Will imagined the Fay Queen sitting in her cell, seething, plotting, waiting for the moment when her imprisonment would end and a new reign of terror could be unleashed upon the land.

Dread and grief intermingling, the spy’s mind flashed back to a small hamlet not far from Stratford, beside the green, green Avon, where he had stood next to Kit Marlowe in front of a dense wall of briar reaching up higher than his head. Some of the twining growth was as thick as his arm, the thorns as sharp as knives. It had not been there the day before.

‘I am ready,’ the playwright had said, holding his chin up defiantly.

Will had glimpsed the fear in the young man’s eyes and nodded. ‘I am sure you are. But it is one thing to learn about the Unseelie Court in the safety of the Palace of Whitehall and another to meet them in the pale, grave-tainted flesh.’

Marlowe swung the axe above his head and began to hack through the dense vegetation. What sounded like a muffled scream echoed through the briar with each blow. ‘They will not scare me,’ the young man replied.

Will hoped Sir Francis Walsingham and his strange, mad aide, Dr Dee, were correct and Marlowe was ready for his first encounter with the supernatural foe. He had seen other men destroyed by their first brush with the nightmarish force. ‘Remember,’ he said gently, ‘the mind rebels against the slightest contact with those foul creatures. They are beyond all reasoning, the source of all fear, the secret behind all the most blood-chilling stories told on a winter’s night since the days of your ancestors.’

‘I know,’ Kit gasped, sweat dripping as he hacked. ‘There is some quality to them that can drive a man mad. But I am prepared.’

In the centre of the briar wall, the two men heard the muffled screams more clearly. Marlowe blanched, pointing. Arms stretched wide, a man hung in the twisting strands, his eyes wide with terror. Only when he stepped closer did Will see that the briar was driven through the man’s flesh, through his very body, piercing one cheek, or one side, or one leg, and bursting out of the other. Small thorny twists had stitched his lips together so that however much he wanted to express his agony, he could not cry out.

‘What do we do?’ Marlowe whispered, sickened.

‘There is nothing we can do. The Unseelie Court have turned cruelty into a fine art.’ With a soothing smile, Will stepped forward and plunged his dagger into the poor soul’s heart.

Marlowe crumpled for a moment, but when he had recovered, he hacked through the remaining briar with angry determination. On the other side, the two men saw a quaint thatched cottage with whitewashed walls and a trail of woodsmoke rising from the chimney. A young woman stood by the door, pretty but heavy-set in the manner of country girls. She smiled at the new arrivals and brushed down her corn-coloured skirts.

But Will and Kit couldn’t tear their gaze away from the figure who stood beside her. Tall, with long brown hair, sallow skin and doublet and breeches of grey, he looked back with fierce contempt almost masked by a supercilious smile. Will felt his stomach churn, and he saw the blood trickling from his companion’s nose. Marlowe was shaking and Will placed a hand on his friend’s shoulder to steady him. ‘Be resolute,’ he whispered.

The playwright nodded, drawing his rapier. The two men advanced on the pale being, but they had barely covered half the distance to the cottage when the Fay leaned in to whisper in the woman’s ear.

‘No,’ Will shouted, breaking into a run.

A shadow crossed the woman’s face. The supernatural being gave a cruel smile and in the blink of an eye he was gone.

When the two men reached the woman, she was humming a pleasant song and rocking gently from side to side. ‘Did you meet my husband?’ she asked in a musical voice. ‘He has been punished for kissing that harlot Rose Culpepper.’

‘You called that thing in?’ Will asked, unable to hide his sadness at the pain the woman had inflicted upon herself and her love in her hurt.

She nodded and beckoned. ‘Come indoors and see my beautiful baby. He sleeps so quietly.’

Marlowe looked full of dread.

The two men followed the good wife into the warm, smoky interior. She went straight to a crib near the hearth. ‘My boy, my Daniel,’ she said with love.

In the crib was a twisted briar mockery of a baby, blackened and covered in thorns, but it writhed as its mother cooed over it. Sickened, Marlowe turned away.

‘That is a beautiful child, indeed,’ Will said. ‘Now, my friend would like to see your garden, while I attend to a matter here.’

The woman smiled, but her eyes showed little sanity left. Hesitantly, Kit led her outdoors, casting troubled glances at his companion.

Once they had gone, Will snatched the changeling from the crib. It spat and lashed out tiny, thorny hands. He hurled it on to the fire where it cried like a real baby before it was consumed by the flames.

Barely had the last screech died away when Will heard Marlowe shouting. He rushed out into the small herb garden, only to see his friend hunched over the bank of the rushing spring river that curled past the cottage.

‘She threw herself in,’ Kit gasped, reeling.

‘Though her mind was destroyed, a part of her knew the truth. That is why we fight the foul Unseelie Court. They prise open the weaknesses in the human heart and destroy from within. They have done this since man first walked England’s green land and they will try to do it until judgement day if we are not vigilant.’

After a long silence, Marlowe said quietly, ‘And I will stand by your side, God help me. Though my life be corrupted by dread from this moment on, I do what I must for my fellow man.’

Proud but sad, Will had clapped his friend on the shoulder and led him back to their horses with the promise of a night of wine to dull the memories, but they both knew Kit’s life was changed for ever.

Will flashed back to the moonlit courtyard, his heart heavy with grief at his friend’s passing. That day in Stratford their friendship had been forged, for they had shared an experience, however terrible, that set them apart from their fellow men. Despite Will’s fears, Marlowe had survived and grown to be an effective spy. A good man, a sad man, and now he was gone.

What part, if any, had the Unseelie Court played in his friend’s demise?

Looking to the top of the Lantern Tower, Will whispered, ‘Kit will be avenged. And if I find your pale hands stained in his blood, you will pay a thousandfold. I vow this now.’

CHAPTER ELEVEN

‘WHO KILLED CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE?’ CARPENTER ASKED IN A low voice. The guttering candle in the centre of the beer-stained trestle illuminated the unease in his features.

Enveloped in the shadows that engulfed the rest of the small, hot, low-ceilinged room, Will and Launceston leaned in to the dying flame.

‘We have a few suspects,’ Will mused, his mood as dark as when he had left the Palace of Whitehall. ‘Frizer, the one who stood accused at the inquest. Poley, his associate, a man we all know is capable of anything.’ He paused, damping down his anger. ‘Or even Thomas Walsingham, Kit’s patron. There were always rumours that their relationship was more than just business, but who knows? I saw little sign of grief in him. Yet Kit’s young friend Tom said Marlowe was gripped with a fear for his own life that very same morning. Would he then proceed to a meeting with the men he was afraid would kill him?’

‘When your attacker’s devil-mask slipped at the Rose, you say you thought you knew the face beneath?’ Carpenter enquired.

‘’Twas a glimpse. The merest suggestion of recognition. I would not say more than that.’

‘Hrrrm,’ the Earl said thoughtfully. ‘One spy dead, another attacked. But what part does this devil of yours play? This vision you had of the Unseelie Court?’

Will listened to the sound of energetic lovemaking reverberating through the ceiling from the room of one of Liz Longshanks’ doxies. The bedroom at the top of the Bankside stew, and his favourite comely companions, pulled at him, but instead he was there, sequestered in the private room at the back where the rich merchants drank before indulging their carnal desires. ‘I have thought about this a great deal, and I have come to believe that it was a warning.’

‘From whom?’ Launceston breathed.

‘Kit Marlowe. He knew nothing of conjuring devils. All he conjured was words. I have no idea how he could have brought that ... that thing,’ the spy flinched at a painful vision of Jenny, black eyes gleaming, ‘into existence on the stage.’

‘There are plenty in the government and the court who considered him devilish for his outspoken views,’ the white-faced man continued.

‘The vision felt like it was a portent, perhaps, or some kind of guidance, though it had the feel of a dream. Fractured. Symbolic. Off-kilter.’

‘Then what use is it?’ Carpenter sniffed.

Frustrated, Will reflected for a moment, then plucked a new candle from the mantelpiece and lit it with the dying flame of the old. The shadows in the room fled to the corners. From under his stool, he pulled the coarse sack young Tom had given him at the funeral, and tipped the sheaf of papers on to the table. Carpenter leaned past him to read the title scrawled on the front in Marlowe’s familiar flourish.

‘The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus. Why, it is only the play Marlowe presented at the Rose the other evening,’ the scar-faced man snorted. He went to a pewter tray on a stool in the corner and poured himself a goblet of malmsey wine.

With deft fingers, Will plucked the folded letter from under the string around the bundle. ‘Kit was keen that I received this work, and he has never given me one of his plays before.’ Holding the letter close to the candle, he scanned it quickly. The words had been written at speed, scrawled feverishly and at times blotted where the ink hadn’t dried before the letter was folded.

I fear this may be our last communication, my dear, trusted friend. The truth lies within. But seek the source of the lies without. Trust no one.

By the time Will had read the note, Carpenter was once again at his shoulder, his brow now furrowed. ‘Trust no one? This sounds to me very like a plot.’

‘That explains why Kit was not at his first night. He was in hiding.’ Will got up and went to the tray to pour himself some wine. He placed one foot upon a stool and sipped his drink, brooding.

Launceston drew his long, white fingers over the sheaf, stopping to tap on the wax that sealed the string. ‘A secret message, then. A warning,’ the Earl suggested in his whispery voice.

‘Trust no one,’ Carpenter repeated. ‘He states the obvious, for once. Damn this world we inhabit. Everyone keeps secrets, separate lives. We know little even of those we depend upon.’

‘As in life,’ Will said with a shrug.

Carpenter drained his drink in one go and slammed the goblet down on the trestle. ‘We expend all our energies keeping secrets from each other,’ he snarled, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘What would our old master Sir Francis have said? Since his death, our world has fallen into darkness, and we all march on the short road to hell.’

Will became aware of Launceston scrutinizing him. He had come to believe the Earl was acutely sensitive to the emotions of others because he couldn’t feel or understand his own. ‘What is it, Robert?’ he asked, taking a sip of his wine.

The Earl spread the fingers of both hands on the trestle before him. ‘I am thinking about the Irish woman you encountered in the churchyard, the one who spoke to your assistant at the Rose. She knows of the plot, somehow. You did not recognize her?’

‘He has forgotten more women who have graced his bed than you or I have ever encountered,’ Carpenter muttered.

‘She is not familiar, though I will pay strict attention if she crosses my path again. Perhaps she is a friend of Kit’s.’ He returned his gaze to the letter. The truth lies within. The playwright always chose his words with precision.

Launceston was thinking the same, Will could see. ‘If Marlowe could have written clearly, he would, but he was afraid his message would be intercepted,’ the Earl noted, tapping one scrupulously clean fingernail on the table. ‘And so, perhaps, he hid clues to what he knew within the words of his own play? The truth lies within would suggest that approach.’

‘Perhaps.’ As Will swigged his wine, he was struck by a revelation. ‘At the graveside, Kit’s patron told me that Sir Francis Walsingham’s grave at St Paul’s had been defaced. It puzzled me at the time. Who would do such a thing? But now I wonder ... Tom met Kit at the river, not far from the cathedral.’

Carpenter leaned in, eager. ‘Marlowe could have left another message. He would have known such an act would reach our ears eventually.’

‘I think I should see the grave for myself, on the morrow,’ Will said, pouring himself another goblet of the sweet wine. ‘And while I busy myself with that task, I have a job for the two of you. Kit had a bolt-hole that few knew of, a small room in Alexander Marcheford’s lodging house not far from the Rose. Go there and find any information he might have left that would explain his death.’

‘But what is the plot?’ Carpenter hammered a fist on the trestle, his voice cracking with dismay. ‘To kill a pair of spies? Why go to such lengths? We kill ourselves sooner or later,’ he added with bitterness.

‘Trust no one, Kit said, and so we should not speak of this outside this room.’ Will tapped one finger on the table. ‘The court is already riven with factions. There are plots and counter-plots aplenty. In that unruly atmosphere, there is space for a greater plot to flourish, unseen by those charged with looking out for such dangers.’

‘The Unseelie Court plays a long game.’ Unblinking, the Earl watched the wavering flame, his pale skin even whiter in the light. ‘With so many of us distracted by threats within and without, this is a good time to strike.’

‘Nothing here makes sense! So many strands, yet we cannot weave them into any cloth. And meanwhile our fate approaches like the tide.’ Carpenter ran a hand through his long hair, his mood darkening by the moment. ‘What is happening to England?’ he added, his voice falling to a mutter. ‘Since the Armada was defeated, we have been cursed with bad luck. Walsingham dead so soon after his greatest victory. Dee exiled to the north. Spain regaining its strength and still scheming, along with most of the other nations of Europe. Papists plotting our Queen’s death within our own shores. And now this plague, eating its way through the heart of our country. We have never been at a lower ebb. Where will it end?’

‘They say the Fair Folk are masters of bad luck.’ Launceston’s emotionless voice added an eerie weight to his words. ‘The Enemy that has tormented us for so long was always good at souring milk and breaking apart man and wife and destroying friendships by driving a wedge into the cracks caused by human weakness. Perhaps they are the invisible hand behind all our misery.’

Will was struck by the Earl’s words. Breaking the seal on the play, he flicked through the papers. No additions to the text leapt out at him, but he knew Kit would be more subtle than that.

Settling into his chair, with his boots on the table, he began to read the work while Carpenter and Launceston drank and dozed. Will was soon engrossed in the hubristic story of the scholar, Faustus, who had reached the limits of his studies and decided to devote himself to magic to continue his intellectual growth. Summoning the devil Mephistophilis, he makes a pact with Lucifer: twenty-four years of life on earth with the devil as his servant, and then he must give up his soul. The ending remained ambiguous: no evidence was found of Faustus’ fate, though the implication was that Lucifer had taken him to eternal damnation.

As he came to the end amid Carpenter’s growling snores, Will reflected on the content. His friend’s stories, like those of many writers, had more than one meaning, and what lay on the surface was not always the most important. Kit had spoken many times about how there was little difference between his work as a writer and his work as a spy – both roles required a convincing liar – and he had been sure it was one of the reasons he excelled at both, to his own self-loathing. There was a great deal in the story of Faustus that would have applied to Marlowe too, Will decided. One statement by Mephistophilis, describing hell, struck him particularly:

Hell hath no limits, nor is circumscribed

,

In one self place, but where we are is hell

,

And where hell is there must we ever be

.

And to be short, when all the world dissolves

,

And every creature shall be purified

,

All places shall be hell that is not heaven

.

Hell is in the minds of everyone, Mephistophilis appeared to be saying, and not a physical location. We make our own hells, Will thought, or have them thrust upon us. He considered the thing that had taken the form of Jenny and wondered if he would see it again.

The sheaf of papers was Marlowe’s original script, covered with blottings, scribblings, annotation and rings of dried wine. Some sections had been obliterated with furious strokes of the quill, and new lines written nearby. Mephistophilis’ description of hell was one of them, and Will wondered if Kit had changed it only recently, as matters came to light. If there were clues hidden within, it would take time to decipher them, and if he knew his friend’s mercurial mind, some clues might well be hidden in the symbolic nature of the text and the meaning might never be fully understood.

The truth lies within, but seek the source of the lies without.

What did Marlowe mean by the last part of his infuriatingly cryptic advice? Frustrated, Will retied the string.

A sharp knock at the door made all three of them jerk alert. Launceston was at the entrance in a flash, his knife ready. ‘Who goes?’ he growled.

‘Will? Are you in there?’

The pale-faced man relaxed. ‘Your assistant.’

At Will’s nod, the Earl opened the door and a breathless Nathaniel darted in. ‘I have run all the way from the river,’ he gasped. ‘I did as you asked, and spent the evening with the watermen listening to the gossip from the city.’ He doubled up, one hand on his knee, as he caught his breath. ‘You were right to fear poor Kit’s death was not the end of it. One of Sir Robert Cecil’s advisers came across the water in such a state I thought he would pull out his hair in a fit. He demanded a horse to ride to Nonsuch immediately to tell your master the news.’

‘Which is?’ Will asked, growing cold.

‘Another spy has been murdered, and in a manner that would give a grown man nightmares.’

CHAPTER TWELVE

WITH THREE SWIFT STROKES, WILL POUNDED THE HILT OF HIS rapier on the broad, iron-studded door of the deadhouse. Those sturdy stone walls had housed unclaimed bodies, and those waiting to be claimed, for centuries. Fidgeting, Carpenter cast unsettled glances along the night-dark Bread Street towards St Mary-Le-Bow churchyard. Intermittently, the scarred man pressed a scented kerchief against his nose to keep out the reek of decay which was stronger than usual on that warm night. His gaze eventually alighted on Launceston, immobile on the edge of the circle of light cast by the lantern over the door. The Earl’s pale skin glowed white in the flickering illumination.

‘Let us hope no watchman chooses this moment to deliver a corpse they have stumbled across in the street,’ Carpenter muttered. ‘They already believe the deadhouse to be haunted by its silent inhabitants.’

Launceston raised one eyebrow at his sullen companion, but gave no sign that he was offended.

‘No more bickering this night,’ Will cautioned. ‘You two are like an old married couple.’

Will would have had both his companions silent from the moment the three of them left Liz Longshanks’ stew, but the men had spent the entire journey across the river into London arguing about Carpenter’s woman.

As he waited for an answer to his knock, there at death’s door, he thought of poor Kit once more. Will recalled the last time he had sat with his friend in the Mermaid, drinking beer beside the fire in the small private back room. ‘We have been the best of friends for many years now,’ Kit had said, his tone maudlin. He was hunched over his earthen pot with its silver handle and lid, staring into the murky depths of his ale. ‘Perhaps you are my only true friend.’

‘This business of ours does not make for easy friendships, Kit,’ Will replied. ‘But it is what it is, and we have to make the best of what we have.’

‘I think I am spent. You ... you have your Jenny to keep you searching. Your quest for answers. But I have nothing. A few pennies here and there. Is that any reward for the sacrifices we make? The loss of all things that make life worth living? When I entered the halls of Cambridge I thought my days would be spent in writing and thought and joy. Not this.’

Will clapped his friend on the shoulder. ‘You are having a black day, that is all.’

Marlowe shook his head, slopping beer drunkenly as he raised his pot to his lips. ‘Events were set in motion that night we first met, and I fear they are now coming to a head.’

‘Kit, I do not like to see you this way. Let me get you back to your lodgings ... or at least to that bawdy-house filled with boys that you love so much.’

Kit pushed Will’s hand away. ‘We understand each other, you and I.’ He looked at Will with raw emotion. ‘Despite all the applause that follows England’s greatest spy, I know that behind it is a tormented man, lonely and lost and at odds with the world in which he has found himself. And you know the truth of my life in the same way. Men like us need our friends, otherwise we are adrift in a stormy sea.’ Marlowe pushed back his stool and lurched to his feet. ‘Know that you have been a good friend to me, Will, and I hope that one day I can be the same to you.’

Grabbing his cloak, Kit had staggered out into the night, throwing off all Will’s attempts to draw him back to the fireside. At the time, Will had put that dark mood down to the drink and the regular melancholy of the writer, but now the note of finality in his friend’s words troubled him. Had Kit foreseen his own death? And had Will ignored those warnings? Had he failed his friend when Kit needed him most? If so, he was a poor friend indeed.

After a moment, shuffling footsteps approached from the other side of the deadhouse door. It swung open with a juddering creak to reveal the mortuary assistant, his beard unkempt, his eyes heavy-lidded. He wore only a filthy shirt and a pair of equally stained hose, the feet a dark brown. His breath had the vinegary stink of ale. His slow, drunken gaze lay on the three arrivals before he looked around for a body.

‘We have no deposit for you,’ Will said with authority. ‘We are here to see a body. A man, brought in this day.’

The assistant moved his stupid eyes from Will to Carpenter and then to Launceston. After he had taken in their fine clothes, he grunted and nodded, shuffling back the way he had come.

‘I think he means us to follow,’ Launceston sniffed.

In the cool entrance hall, dirty sheets lay on the worn flagstones alongside a pile of splintered boards used for transporting the bodies. Two lanterns glowed on opposing walls. The assistant took one of them and, holding it aloft, lit the way down a flight of wide stone steps. At the foot, a large cellar was divided into four rooms by arches, the stone walls black with moisture, glistening in the wavering light of candles. In each vault, large, worn trestles stood in rows. The body of a woman rested on one, her skin white and pockmarked, her neck broken. Her clothes were poor and filthy. A whore, Will guessed. A gutter ran across the centre of the stone flags where the blood and bodily fluids could be sluiced.

‘As cold as the grave,’ Carpenter growled uneasily, unconsciously rubbing his pink scar.

‘And as foul-smelling as the Fleet,’ his leader responded. ‘But we are all used to the stink of death by now.’

Launceston hummed a jolly tune.

The mortuary assistant led them to the farthest vault, where a heavily bloodstained shroud was draped over a body on a trestle. ‘This one?’ he grunted.

‘Leave us,’ Will said. ‘We would be alone with our brother in this sad hour.’

‘I wouldn’t be lifting the sheet,’ the assistant grunted, turning and shuffling back up the steps.

‘We should not be here,’ Carpenter said, a hand to his mouth. He took a step away from the trestle. ‘Why put ourselves at even greater risk of the plague?’

‘The Lord Mayor and the Aldermen have decreed that no plague victims should find their way into the deadhouse. They are dispatched directly to the pits for burial.’ Will eyed the rusty stains that covered the entire length of the sheet.

‘This business reeks of the Unseelie Court,’ the scar-faced man spat. ‘Whenever there is something that stinks of churchyards and night terrors, they are not far behind.’

‘They have been silent in recent times but they circle us like wolves, ready to fall upon us when we display the merest sign of weakness,’ the Earl agreed.

Will took the edge of the sheet and hesitated, thinking of Kit beneath the filthy blanket on the floor of Mrs Bull’s lodging house.

‘You know the bastards are skilled at finding weaknesses and exploiting them. They see our greatest desires, our basest yearnings, and they twist them and draw them out until we follow like fools.’ Launceston’s right hand trembled in anticipation as he watched his leader holding the sheet corner.

‘Get on with it, then,’ Carpenter snapped, flashing a glance towards the shape under the shroud. ‘If these remains can tell us aught of this mystery, let us look and be away.’

The Earl leaned over the trestle as if trying to see through the sheet. ‘You are abnormally squeamish, John. You are no stranger to death.’

‘Not in this form. Some deaths come naturally. Others are necessary. But this ...’ Carpenter choked on his words as he pointed to the sodden sheet. ‘This is an abomination.’

‘Let us see.’ Will steeled himself and stripped back the shroud.

Carpenter recoiled, covering his mouth in horror.

Launceston still hovered over the trestle, bemused. ‘I think that is Gavell,’ he muttered.

The corpse was almost unrecognizable as the man who gambled away his meagre earnings in the inns of Bankside. Where two brown eyes had been were now black holes. The straw-coloured hair still stood up in tufts on the head, but the skin of the face, neck and torso had been carefully removed to reveal the oozing, red musculature beneath.

‘Why, this is the work of a master,’ the Earl breathed. He hovered for a long moment, seemingly oblivious to the meaty smell coming off the body. In a slow examination, he moved around the torso, his nose a hand’s-width from the flesh. ‘See here, and here,’ he whispered. ‘The merest knife cuts. The skin has been removed with great skill. This is no butcher’s work.’ His brow furrowed and he looked up. ‘The curious knife you described, the one wielded by your masked attacker. Could it have been designed for this?’ He waved a hand across the sticky corpse.

‘I would say’, Will mused, ‘that it would have been perfectly designed for this task.’ He had a sudden vision of himself lying upon the trestle.

‘What is the point?’ Carpenter’s voice was almost a shriek. ‘Kill a man and be done with it, but why take time to flay him, unless you have lost your wits?’

‘Why, indeed?’ Will rubbed his thumb and forefinger thoughtfully on his chin-hair. He felt a wave of compassion. Gavell was by no description a good man, but he deserved a better ending than this.

‘Wait, what is this?’ the Earl mused. He indicated black streaks smudged across several areas of the raw flesh. Examining them for a moment, he shook his head and moved on. Finally he stood back, his breath short. ‘This may simply be a work of art, like one of Marlowe’s plays. The same attention to detail. The same loving care.’

Will stared into Gavell’s empty eye sockets for a long moment, allowing the detail of the murder to settle on him, and then he said, ‘No. Two spies dead. An attempt on the life of a third. I cannot believe that it is by chance. Turn the body over.’

‘God’s wounds!’ Carpenter cursed. ‘Leave the poor sod be.’

‘If this is a plot, we must divine its nature from whatever we have to hand,’ Will stressed. ‘Turn him over.’

Muttering oaths under his breath, the scar-faced man kept his eyes averted as he gripped the sticky shoulders. Launceston took the ankles without a second thought, and together they eased the body off the puddle of congealing blood with a low, sucking sound. Carpenter grimaced.

Gavell’s grisly remains clunked face down on to the trestle. Will pointed to a mark carved into the muscle of the dead man’s back: a circle, bisected at the compass points with short lines, and with a square at its centre.

‘From this we can surmise that Gavell was not simply dispatched because of the work he did,’ he said. ‘This is not a crude murder. There is thought and meaning in this design.’

‘But what does it mean?’ the Earl asked.

Circling the trestle slowly, Will ignored the question and reflected on the matter at hand. ‘Is someone attempting to kill the spies of England, one by one?’ he said thoughtfully. ‘And if so, to what purpose? Our lives already have little value and we are easily replaced.’

‘Because of what we know?’ Carpenter suggested.

‘And what do we know?’ Will paused as a notion struck him. ‘We know a matter of the greatest importance: the existence of the Unseelie Court. It is a secret held only by the Queen herself, the Privy Council, and we spies under the command of Sir Robert Cecil. It is considered too terrible to be discussed beyond that small group. Even Essex has not been allowed to tell his men, which must leave him greatly aggrieved, for his spies can never be effective without that knowledge.’ Pondering, Will began to walk around the table once more.

‘Yes.’ Launceston’s eyes were like lamps in the half-light. ‘For if all the spies who knew of the Enemy were killed, who could ever stop them?’

Coming to a halt, Will leaned against the damp stone wall and folded his arms. ‘Which raises one other troubling matter. Everyone in England recognizes the work I do as a spy. But who knew Gavell participated in these dark arts?’

Will took another look at the raw, red body. ‘I am rapidly coming to the conclusion that we should heed Master Marlowe in these matters,’ he said quietly, ‘and seek a solution ourselves. Our lives may depend on it.’

‘Surely you do not suspect Cecil?’ Carpenter exclaimed. ‘Or any in our greater circle?’ He turned his back on the corpse and looked towards the steps, as if planning his exit.

‘I suspect everyone until I have proof otherwise,’ Will replied. ‘There is too much that is unknown here, and little that makes sense with the information we have to hand. I would learn more first.’

A loud booming resonated from the deadhouse door above them. Will raised a hand to quiet the other two.

‘A watchman delivering a body,’ Carpenter whispered. ‘Or a beadle.’

At the top of the steps, the deadhouse door creaked open. A loud voice echoed, demanding entry.

‘That is no watchman,’ the Earl said quietly.

Other raised voices were followed by a cry that could only have come from the mortuary assistant.

‘Quickly.’ Flinging the shroud back over the corpse, Will whirled a pointing finger towards a haphazard pile of boards and unused trestles in a large alcove beside the steps. As they darted towards the hiding place, there was another cry and a clatter. The drunken assistant slid down the steps and sprawled on the flagstones, where he lay in a stupor, moaning gently.

The three spies eased themselves behind the trestles and boards and ducked low, finding positions where they could look out into the shadowy mortuary. They’d barely settled into place when the pounding of boots down the stone steps heralded the arrival of five men, their rapiers drawn. The intruders all wore tall-crowned, flat-topped black hats and black cloaks that reached down to their ankles. Will strained to see their faces, but they kept the brims of their hats pulled down. They paused at the foot of the steps and scanned the cellar before the leader said in a gruff voice, ‘Empty. Go.’

With well-drilled speed and efficiency, the other four men responded to the order, fanning out across the mortuary to examine the bodies on the trestles. Uneasy, Will wondered if they were part of the militia. Certainly, the leader stood with an air of authority as he watched his men move quickly around the underground room.

A low, short whistle came from the man who had found Gavell’s body under the sheet. The leader marched over to inspect the corpse and gave a nod of approval. With busy hands, the four other men wrapped the seeping body in the shroud and then, on a count of three, lifted it on to their shoulders.

Will, Carpenter and Launceston exchanged suspicious glances. Gavell’s remains belonged to his family. This theft went against the very laws of the land; no authority would have sanctioned such an act.

The men marched towards the steps, the leader following behind like a mourner. As he neared the hiding place, the glare of a candle lit his face under the brim of his hat. His eyes were the colour of steel, his cheeks pockmarked, and he sported a well-trimmed black beard. Will knew he had seen that face before, perhaps somewhere among the personal guards of one of the nobles at court, but he could not recall exactly.

The mortuary assistant moaned loudly as the intruders passed with Gavell’s body, and he struggled to raise himself up on his arms. The leader of the black-cloaked men stooped down to grab the drunken assistant’s filthy shirt at the neck, and with a rough movement hauled the bleary-eyed face up.

‘If anyone asks what happened to the body of the flayed man, you do not know,’ the steely-eyed man growled. ‘If you speak of this, you will quickly find yourself one of your own customers. Do you understand?’

His eyes wide with fear, the assistant nodded.

The leader of the intruders flung the man back down on the flagstones, and waved a hand at his waiting men. ‘Get him out to the cart and away, quickly. Like the last one,’ he ordered in a low, gravelly voice. ‘No trace must remain.’

The men lurched up the steps with the sticky, cloth-wrapped body, and after a glance around the vaults the leader followed, casting one final, brief look at the mortuary assistant. In that stare, Will read the man’s thoughts: he considered killing the drunken sot, but knew it would raise even greater questions. A missing body could be explained away. A murdered mortuary assistant would have consequences.

When the deadhouse door boomed shut behind the intruders, the drunken man released a pathetic whimper and scrambled up the steps, no doubt to lose himself in more beer. The three spies eased themselves out from their hiding place and stood in troubled silence for a moment.

‘What does this mean?’ Carpenter asked quietly. ‘He said, Like the last one.’

‘Another murder, then,’ Launceston mused. ‘Hidden before we heard of it. But who was the victim?’

‘Someone at court is covering the bloody trail,’ Will replied, his expression grave. ‘This plot reaches further than we ever imagined – to the heart of England itself.’

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CUPPING HIS HAND AROUND THE CANDLE FLAME, OSWYN HASARD strode through the silent chambers of the sleeping Nonsuch Palace. The glow flared under the brim of his tall-crowned hat, lighting the steel in his eyes. Though it had been three hours’ hard riding from London, the stink of the deadhouse still clung to the black-cloaked man. The flayed body had been weighted with stones and dumped in the river to feed the fishes, like the other two, and his men had been sent to their beds, their lips sealed. With still an hour to dawn, the night had been a success.

Whispered voices reached his ears as he neared the oak-panelled chamber overlooking the palace gardens. Glimpsing the faint glow of a candle, he moistened his thumb and forefinger and extinguished the flame of his own light, slowing as he reached the door, which stood ajar. Peering through the crack, he saw his master, Lord Derby, in huddled conversation around a stubby candle with the Earl of Essex. The two men could not have been less alike: Essex, strong, handsome and filled with the vigour of youth, aglow in his white doublet and cloak; Derby, heavy-set in his black gown, broken-veined cheeks the colour of ham above his wiry grey beard. The darkness appeared to press in tightly around the two figures.

‘Why should I trust you?’ Essex was asking, eyeing the other man suspiciously.

‘I have your best interests at heart, as always,’ Derby responded firmly. ‘The Queen’s Little Elf has become troublesome within the Privy Council, guiding Her Majesty away from the light and into the shadows. He can no longer be trusted.’

The Earl’s eyes gleamed. Exactly what he wants to hear, Hasard thought.

‘Cecil’s power is based in part upon his network of spies. If they were constrained ... relieved of their influence ... crushed ... there would be an opportunity for your own band of spies to gain ascendance,’ Derby continued in a whisper, ‘and the Queen would have no choice but to anoint you as her true favourite at court.’

Essex tugged at his beard, already imagining the power he might wield. ‘And what do you gain from seeing Cecil cut down to his true size?’

‘There are a few of us in the Privy Council, at court, in positions of authority, who are distressed at the path England has taken since the glorious defeat of the Spanish navy. At that moment we were on the cusp of a golden age. Power. Control of trade. Influence.’ Derby’s eyes flashed. ‘All that opportunity has slipped through our fingers. We are beset on every side by enemies, including the one we fear most.’

Essex nodded gravely.

‘I do what I do for England,’ Derby continued. ‘There is no personal gain.’

‘Noble motives,’ the Earl replied with a nod. ‘At first I feared this was some plot to dethrone Elizabeth. If that were true, I would have been forced to move against you. As it is ...’ He paused thoughtfully. ‘Cecil’s spies must be removed from the game in the first instance, and then ... we shall see.’

With undue eagerness, Derby grasped the other man’s hand and pumped it. ‘You have made the right choice,’ he said. ‘Those who do not stand with us are against us.’

Essex nodded, smiled and made to remove his hand, but Derby held fast. Hasard felt a ripple of unease. Wide-eyed and grinning, the older man leaned forward, a soft, breathy laugh escaping his gritted teeth. With his thumb, he began to stroke the back of the Earl’s hand. The caress was not a suggestion of intimacy, Hasard could tell, but it was still breathtakingly inappropriate. His master looked as if he had lost his wits.

Unsettled, Essex tore his hand free, muttered a goodbye and hurried away. Hasard pressed himself back into the shadows so he would not be seen.

When the Earl had disappeared into the dark along the corridor, the cloaked man slipped into the oak-panelled chamber. With a sly smile, Derby nodded, once more the man Hasard recognized. ‘All is well,’ the newcomer said, still uneasy. His master was a man of propriety, restrained, sophisticated, aloof. He had never behaved in such a manner before.

‘Good,’ Derby replied, beckoning his assistant closer to the candle flame. ‘Our plans move apace. We now pull the strings of the Earl of Essex. In thrall to his ambition, he will do all that we wish.’

But who pulls your strings? Hasard wondered.

‘Our numbers grow by the week,’ Derby continued, rubbing his hands eagerly. ‘Our influence reaches into all parts of the government, and soon, very soon, we will be ready to make our move. For now, I have more work for you and your men.’

‘Another body to dispose of?’

‘Not yet. I fear Cecil’s spies are becoming aware. We must act quicker than we intended. Harry them at every turn. Seek out Swyfte – he is the most dangerous when roused. But his men, too, must be driven off course. Go to Bankside first, where they waste their days and nights in the stews and inns and gaming halls. Search all London. Do not allow them to rest for a moment. Capture them, if you can. Kill them, if you must. They are a threat to England’s future prosperity.’

‘Very well.’ Hasard bowed.

‘I will send someone to help you.’

‘Who?’

‘You will not see him, but he will be there.’ Derby looked past his assistant to the door where Danby the coroner had entered silently, with another, hooded man who clutched four fat candles to his chest. Hasard was disturbed to see a long trail of spittle hanging from the corner of the coroner’s mouth.

‘Go now, Master Hasard, and help us usher in a new age for England.’ Derby waved his hand to dismiss his assistant.

Hasard left, unnerved by the fire he saw burning in Danby’s eyes. As he passed the two new arrivals, he looked into the deep hood and was shocked to see the face of a devil. Only when he had stepped out of the door did he realize it was a mask, fiery red, with a jagged crack running across it.

Hurrying into the palace’s dark, Hasard discerned the faint words of Derby as he greeted the two other men: ‘Now we must listen carefully to the whispers of our masters in the shadows.’

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CARPENTER LISTENED TO THE TERRIFIED WHIMPERINGS, BUT HIS mind was elsewhere. A dark foreboding had gripped him from the moment he left the deadhouse and even the light of day could not dispel it.

On the other side of the cramped room tucked away in the rafters of a timber-framed Bankside house, Launceston pressed his dagger to the neck of the kneeling landlord, his other hand dragging the man’s head back by his greasy hair. The landlord looked like a bullfrog, eyes bulging with fear above a flat, broad nose and fat lips, his filthy linen undershirt barely concealing his large belly and badly worn breeches.

Christopher Marlowe’s secret lodgings had been torn apart, the bed upended, loose boards ripped up to reveal the mouse droppings and straw beneath; the small table lay upturned, the chair in pieces. Shards of plaster had been torn from the walls in a search for hiding places and now lay in heaps everywhere. White dust coated all the surfaces, whipped into whirls by the breeze from the open door so that it appeared to be snowing in the shaft of sunlight breaking through the little window.

‘Who did this?’ the pallid man demanded as if he were asking the time of day.

‘Four men!’ his prisoner gulped. ‘They came in the night three days ago!’

‘And you have not yet cleaned and relet these premises? I have never known a landlord to leave a room sitting empty.’ The Earl surveyed the room’s detritus for anything important that he might have missed.

‘I was afraid. In case they came back.’ Spittle sprayed from the fat man’s mouth.

The room was barely ten foot square, cheap in an area where all rooms cost little rent, but it would have served Marlowe’s purpose, Carpenter knew. Few would have come looking for the famous playwright there among the cutpurses, and apprentices, and poor field labourers.

‘What did they look like?’ Launceston pressed.

‘I did not see their faces. When they forced their way in, I hid in my room until they had done their business,’ the terrified man babbled.

‘Rogues? Or gentlemen?’ Carpenter sifted through a bundle of papers scattered across the boards. It was the remnants of an unfinished play in Marlowe’s spidery scrawl. Nothing of importance, he thought.

The landlord rolled his wide eyes towards the scar-faced man. ‘Not rogues. I saw fine clothes.’

Carpenter glanced over in time to see Launceston’s dagger wavering over the pulsing artery in the landlord’s neck. The Earl had the familiar hungry gleam in his eye.

‘Robert,’ Carpenter cautioned. His voice was understated, but the pale man knew the meaning by now. Reluctantly, the Earl removed the blade and thrust the landlord roughly across the boards.

The fat man clutched his hands together and insisted, ‘I speak the truth! Marlowe only wrote his plays here. He kept nothing of value.’

‘Then why would gentlemen be searching his room?’ Carpenter continued.

The landlord gaped stupidly. Knowing any more questions would be futile, the scarred spy grabbed the neck of the landlord’s shirt and dragged him to the open door. A loud crashing echoed as the man half fell, half threw himself down the winding stairs.

Carpenter kicked the door shut. ‘Our suspicions are proving correct. Marlowe’s room searched on the night of his death. Sweeping up any filthy trail left in the wake of a murder. And no lone killer, either. A plot, then.’

Launceston’s hand was trembling as he sheathed his dagger. ‘Marlowe offended many people in his short life. But this smacks of careful planning and authority.’

The scar-faced man crossed to the small window and peered out over the thatch and clay tiles of the Bankside rooftops towards the river. ‘This is not good weather for any of us. Yet I cannot see a pattern here. In Marlowe’s murder the culprit is known, and no attempt was made to hide the body or the crime. But the attack on Will at the Rose was a different matter, as was the brutality inflicted on Gavell.’

‘If the Unseelie Court truly is eliminating spies who know of them, one by one, there may well be no pattern,’ the Earl mused. ‘Any means of dispatch would suffice.’

‘But this is a conspiracy of madness.’ Carpenter watched the men at work in the fields and dreamed of another life. ‘Men at court working alongside our traditional Enemy? That is like lambs lying down with wolves.’

He had a sense of the world closing in around him. It was bad enough that his only real friend was Launceston, who appeared to have no human feelings and lived only for killing.

‘Hurrm,’ the Earl grunted at his back.

‘What is it?’ Carpenter snapped.

‘The room has been torn apart. Whoever did it must have believed that Marlowe had information which could be of use to us.’ The pale-faced man continued to turn slowly, studying every aspect of his surroundings. ‘What did our playwright discover?’

Carpenter righted a stool and sat on it. ‘We might have got more information from the landlord if you hadn’t been overcome by your feverish desire to draw blood,’ he growled irritably.

‘And do you think it is pleasant for me to listen to your whining morning, noon and night?’ Kneeling, the Earl began to examine the upended table.

‘And that is the thanks I get? Where would you be without me? Your head on a pike at the bridge gates, I would wager.’ The surly Carpenter kicked a goblet across the room in anger. ‘What now? Are you ignoring me?’

Launceston traced his pale fingers across the tabletop and then righted it. With the back of his hand, he brushed off the dirt and then grabbed a fistful of plaster dust, spraying it across the wood. Carpenter watched him curiously. Leaning close to the surface, the Earl gently blew the surplus dust away. He studied what remained behind for a moment and then said, ‘Here.’

The scar-faced man came over and saw, first of all, an outline in white where the dust had filled the grooves carved by a knife. It formed a circle with a square within it, the same symbol that they had both witnessed at the deadhouse, carved into the back of the spy Gavell.

‘Marlowe knew of Gavell’s murderer,’ Carpenter said in a quiet, thoughtful voice.

‘Or he must have known this sign had some special significance.’ The Earl drew a finger around the outline. ‘I would say he carved it here one night, while ruminating over the meaning of what he had discovered.’

‘There.’ Carpenter pointed to letters carved into the wood near the symbol.

Launceston threw more plaster dust on the surface to make the words clearer. ‘Clement. Makepiece. Swyfte. Marlowe. Gavell. Shipwash. Pennebrygg. And here, further down, Devereux, with a question mark.’

‘Robert Devereux? The Earl of Essex?’

‘Perhaps. The family is old, with many branches.’

Carpenter’s eyes widened. ‘All spies. Swyfte, Marlowe, Gavell – in order. If this is a list of victims, then those poor bastards Clement and Makepiece are already dead. I have not seen either of them in recent weeks.’

‘Nor I.’

‘We must warn Shipwash and Pennebrygg—’

Launceston held up a hand to silence his companion. ‘Think clearly, you droning codpiece. Why are these spies listed out of all our fellow liars, cheats and murderers? How would Marlowe know these names in advance of the murders being committed, or some of them, at least?’

A noise at the door brought a flash of steel. In an instant, the two men were either side of the entrance, silent, poised, glinting daggers at the ready. At Carpenter’s nod, Launceston tore open the door and dragged in a figure in a grey-hooded cloak, poised on the threshold.

With a cry, the stranger turned, throwing off her hood, to reveal black hair and a pale, pretty face. ‘Wait. It is I.’

‘Alice? What are you doing here?’ Carpenter said, shocked. His eyes flickered towards the Earl, who studied the woman icily. Though the face gave nothing away, the scarred spy could read every critical thought in his companion’s head. ‘You should not be here,’ he continued, flushing.

When Alice drew closer, Carpenter saw deep concern in her features. ‘I went to the stew you frequent,’ she whispered with only a hint of embarrassment, ‘and Will Swyfte’s man directed me here. I was lucky to catch him before he left to meet his master.’

‘Enough prattle. Speak your message and then be off,’ Launceston snapped.

Carpenter glared at his companion.

‘In the kitchens last night, one of the other girls said that she’d heard a rumour that all Kit Marlowe’s closest friends were to be questioned, on the orders of the Privy Council,’ the woman said, clasping her hands together. ‘They fear Master Marlowe has infected you all with his atheist views. John, you know what that means. The Tower ...’ Her voice tailed away, unspoken fears of torture and execution clear in her face.

‘Rumours,’ the Earl snorted.

‘I understand your doubts,’ Alice continued. ‘There is fear and suspicion throughout the court these days, but I could take no risk. And when I arrived here in Bankside, I saw strange men everywhere, questioning apprentices and merchants, stopping carts. John, they are watching this very house. Four men across the street—’

‘What? And you still came here?’ Carpenter exclaimed, worried now.

‘For you.’ Concerned, the woman pressed her palms together as though she were praying for his soul. ‘Oh,’ she said, puzzled, her hand going to her nose. When she examined her finger, a droplet of blood glistened. ‘I feel unwell ... an ache in my belly ...’

‘Now see what you have done,’ the Earl hissed.

Easing open the door, Carpenter stepped to the top of the dusty wooden stairs. He could feel the familiar sensations himself now as his body rebelled against the presence of something unnatural: the dull thump deep in his head, the churning in the pit of his stomach, as if he had eaten sour apples. ‘Not now,’ he muttered, the panic rising, ‘with Alice here. Please God, let it not be so.’

His hands trembling, the spy squatted on the top step and tried to peer around the turn in the stairs. From below came the faint creak of a foot upon a step. The rest of the house was still.

Carpenter glanced back into the room where a baffled Alice waited. He felt his chest tighten.

His head was filled with a sound like a dagger drawn across glass. It was only a man slowly climbing the stairs, the spy told himself. Mere flesh that could be torn with a blade. A life that could be extinguished without another thought.

Another long, low creak.

Carpenter gripped the banister until his knuckles turned white. ‘Just a man,’ he breathed, readying his dagger.

The soft tread continued up the stairs.

Carpenter felt the pressure in his head grow until he thought he would faint. Blood trickled on to his upper lip. Desperation gripped him and he leaned out over the banister to try to see what was coming, although he knew, God help him, and he could deny it no longer.

A grey shadow fell across the cracked plaster of the wall.

Turning, Carpenter waved his hand frantically at Alice and Launceston, but they only stood like statues. In frustration, he almost cried out. But what could they do? His gaze was drawn back by the terrible pull of that rising shadow. A drop of his blood spattered on the boards.

All he could think was: It should not be here, not now, in Bankside in broad daylight.

For a moment the spy thought he saw two shadows, the one on the wall and the thing that cast it. The figure climbing the stairs took on more substance, as if it was emerging from autumn mist. Carpenter glimpsed bloodless skin, a head marked with black and blue interconnecting circles. It wore a black cloak with a hood thrown back, that swirled around it like a storm cloud. Rooted, the spy felt the ringing in his head grow so loud he thought his skull would burst.

As though it could sense Carpenter’s presence, the thing turned its head slowly up to him. The pale figure’s gaze fell upon the scar-faced spy like a shroud. Thin, pale lips pulled back from yellowing teeth in what could have been a wolfish grin, or a predatory snarl, but meant the same thing.

Tearing himself out of his frozen state, the scarred man threw himself back into the room, slamming the door and dragging the bed in front of it. ‘Robert, help me,’ he pleaded pitifully, looking around the small chamber. ‘Help Alice.’

Launceston only stared blankly.

‘John, what is wrong? Have they come for you?’ the woman cried, running to grasp his arms.

Carpenter pushed her away. ‘Robert, please. I need your help. Take her ... take her,’ his eyes fell upon the small window, the only way out of the room, ‘out and across the roof. It is our only hope.’

Troubled by her love’s desperate tone, the woman began to protest. Carpenter grabbed her shoulders and begged, ‘Alice, you must trust me. If you see what is beyond that door, you may never sleep again. You may lose your wits, or your life. Go now, and do not look back.’

‘What about you?’

‘I will hold off our Enemy as long as I can.’ The spy looked to the Earl and at first thought he was not going to help. But then Launceston gave a curt nod and beckoned for the woman to join him as he threw open the window and looked out into the bright morning.

Carpenter drew his rapier, prepared to die. At the Rose Theatre, he had dismissed the Earl’s warning that he would be the death of Alice, but now he was terrified he had brought about that very tragedy.

Footsteps approached the door.

‘What is out there?’ the woman whispered, growing pale.

‘Go,’ Carpenter yelled, throwing more broken furniture towards the door with his free hand.

Levering himself into the small window, Launceston wriggled out and pulled himself up on to the eaves. A moment later, he leaned back in, upside down, and grasped Alice’s arm. She shrieked as he manhandled her to the window.

‘This is not a time for niceties,’ the pale man said. ‘Do not struggle or I will drop you to your death.’

The footsteps had come to a halt and there was a faint rustling sound on the other side of the door. In the room, the quality of light dimmed, and even the slightest sound became strangely distorted.

Half wondering if he had doomed his love to a different kind of fate, Carpenter held her gaze for a moment until she was dragged up to the roof. He felt a flood of relief.

A crash shocked him alert. The door was being driven into the bed frame, and then again, pushing the obstacle away. His blade levelled, he backed to the window.

‘Get out here, you gleeking canker-blossom,’ Launceston bellowed at his back. ‘Or do you wish to die to prove your love?’

Sheathing his rapier, the spy clambered into the window space. As the door crashed open, he felt like he was peering into an open grave, but then the Earl grabbed his cloak and almost dragged him out of the window. Carpenter had a vision of his death from two quarters: from the thing in the room, or the plummet to a muddy yard where hens ran clucking. But then he was clutching for the eaves and trying to kick away from the window ledge.

The spy felt something cold and dry grab his ankle. He kicked back furiously and gave a tight grin when he met resistance. Nails dug into his flesh and inexorably he began to be pulled back inside.

The ghastly face of Launceston appeared upside-down in front of him.

‘Go,’ Carpenter gasped. ‘You have a chance to get away.’

‘And leave you here?’ the Earl replied, holding on tight.

Carpenter felt as if he would be torn in two. His leg was afire with agony as the talons continued to tear at him, but he knew the thing in the room was only taunting him; it could tear his entire limb off in an instant if it chose. Realizing he had only a moment to save himself, the spy gave himself to his companion’s grip and freed one hand so he could draw his rapier. Leaning down, he rammed the blade through the open window. He was met with a satisfying roar of pain and his leg came free.

Launceston dragged Carpenter roughly over the eaves and on to the creaking tiles. Alice cowered further along the roof. ‘Hurry,’ the scarred spy gasped. ‘It will be after us in a moment. How can it move so freely? What has happened to our defences?’

‘It is worse than that,’ the Earl said, helping his friend to his feet. He pointed down to the street where men in black cloaks and hats were running towards the house.

‘The world has gone mad,’ Carpenter muttered.

Precariously, he edged along the tiles behind the Earl. It was hot in the morning sun and the breeze caught the scent of the fields and woods to the south. Taking Alice’s hand, he whispered, ‘Do not look back, whatever happens.’

‘John, I do not want you to live in this world any longer,’ the woman replied tearfully.

The scarred spy cast an eye towards Launceston before replying. ‘We shall talk of these matters later. But for now we must escape. I fear there is no longer a safe place for us anywhere in London.’

How far does this plot spread? Carpenter wondered as he listened to the cries of the men spreading across Bankside. He couldn’t estimate the numbers, but he now knew there were more than the five they had encountered in the deadhouse.

‘We have no choice now,’ the Earl whispered as if he could read his companion’s thoughts. ‘We must run ... hide.’

Glancing back, Carpenter saw a hooked, white hand reaching over the eaves.

‘Where do we go from here?’ Alice asked, terrified.

He nodded towards a thatched cottage next to the lodging house. ‘We jump.’

Before the woman could protest, Carpenter gripped her hand tightly and propelled her towards the edge of the roof.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

‘KEEP WATCH? FOR WHOM?’ BAFFLED, NATHANIEL EXAMINED THE wash of faces streaming along the nave of St Paul’s. Gentlemen displayed the fine silk linings of their cloaks and cutpurses slyly eyed the gullible and the rich. Merchants and lawyers ambled with clients, servants swapped gossip and usurers barked for trade. The din echoed up to the cathedral’s vaulted roof, tongues from across Europe colliding with accents from all England, Scotland and Ireland. Deals were negotiated, bargains made, crimes and conspiracies planned and meetings held. Despite the threat of the plague, Paul’s Walk was busier than any nearby street.

‘Watch for anyone watching me,’ Will replied under his breath. He kept his head down, trying to lose himself in the throng. Every sense buzzed. He edged through the press of bodies, the sweet smell of incense mingling with the sour sweat of the herd. Here and there, bright afternoon sun slanting through the stained-glass windows threw rainbows across the honey-coloured stone, small points of beauty in the middle of confusion.

Will located Sir Francis Walsingham’s final resting place with ease. Many had forgotten the location, but that sad, understated funeral had been burned into his memory as the point when everything changed.

As the old spymaster’s second cousin, Thomas, had hinted at Kit’s funeral, the lettering stood out on the unmarked stone flag that lay above the grave, despite the numerous feet that had trudged across it in the days since it had been penned. Squatting beside the steady flow of passers-by, the spy read what had been clearly scrawled in desperation: In the beginning was the Word.

Under beginning and Word had been drawn a tiny circle with a line through it: Marlowe’s private signature for his closest friend, a message for Will’s eyes only. A code? The line came from the Gospel of John and continued: And the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

What had Marlowe been trying to tell him, and what was the relevance of the double signature of bisected circles? Had Kit meant to highlight the two words – beginning and Word?

‘Will?’ Nathaniel hissed in warning. Half standing, Will peered through the stream of people to see three stern-faced men moving purposefully through the crowd towards the grave, their gaze fixed on Nathaniel.

‘Come,’ the spy whispered. Keeping low, he weaved through the crowd with Nat close behind him. When they reached the great east door, he glanced back and saw the glowering men had caught sight of him. Now in no doubt as to their intention, Will watched them thrusting their way through the bodies in his direction.

‘Who are they?’ the young assistant said with a note of concern. ‘More cuckolded husbands seeking recompense?’

‘Would that they were. Run, Nat. I fear it would not do to encounter those three now.’

The churchyard was just as crowded as the nave. Men haggled for business, raising their voices to drown out the preachers bellowing their prophecies of the End-Times to small clutches of the devout. As he ran past, Will snatched a handful of the cheap, sensational pamphlets from one of the sellers and flung them up into the air. The fluttering sheets only adding to the confusion, as the cursing seller scrambled to gather them up.

The two men raised angry cries from all quarters as they shouldered their way through the throng. Glancing back, Will saw the three pursuers had now drawn their rapiers.

‘Stop them!’ one of the men yelled. ‘Thieves!’

A brave soul dressed in a flamboyant, expensive cloak stepped forward to apprehend the fugitives. Before he could utter a sound, Will had knocked him flat with one punch. But others were already moving in to answer the call.

‘This does not bode well,’ the assistant said, glancing around uneasily.

‘Nat, where is your sense of adventure?’ Will unsheathed his sword as he ran, flashing it back and forth to clear a path.

‘I left it in the box where I keep my wish for an early grave,’ the young man gasped, trying to keep up with his master.

Will came to a halt at the line of carts and horses trundling along the rutted street. On the other side was the jumbled sprawl of houses and filthy alleys south of Maiden Lane where he knew they would be able to lose themselves if they gained a little distance.

Glancing around for a likely opportunity, he saw heads turned suddenly away from the street, man after man crossing himself and muttering prayers. Even before he smelled the sickening spoiled-eggs stench, he knew what was coming.

As the death-cart trundled into view, Nathaniel too tried to turn away, but Will grabbed him and said, ‘This is no time to be worrying about your mortal soul, my friend. If we are fortunate there will be time enough to make amends to God.’

Grabbing the assistant by the scruff, the spy hauled him into the flow of carts. The angry calls of the carters cracking their whips and yanking on the reins to steady their horses drowned out Nathaniel’s protestations.

‘Not a moment to lose, Nat,’ Will said, eyeing the three men who had just broken through the confusion to reach the cathedral gates. He dragged the young man down the centre of the street in between the rows of carts. They came to the death-cart where the driver and his assistant sat on the bench with their heads bowed, their drawn faces scarred by the things they had been forced to witness. In the back, the corpses were piled high, tightly wrapped in stained sheets.

As Will ducked by, he flicked the tip of his rapier into the horse’s flank.

The beast reared up, whinnying in shock. Up too went the cart, the bodies tumbling like sacks of grain into the road, the driver and assistant both flung from their bench. The horse close behind also reared to avoid the grisly cargo dumped in its path, and within a moment beasts all around were skittering wildly, the carters fighting to keep them under control as their wagons swerved and ground to a halt. Along the edges of the street, men and women were shouting and calling to others to come and see the spectacle.

Will kept a tight grip on Nathaniel, dragging him under a cart to the other side of the street. He allowed himself one glance back to see the three pursuers caught up in the crush, before squeezing through the raucous mob and away into the quiet alleys beyond.

Racing along a convoluted path among the houses, he finally brought Nathaniel to a halt beside an old beer barrel where a dog sheltered from the day’s heat. A pall of smoke hung over the still alleys from the fires smouldering outside many of the homes. The Lord Mayor had directed that all refuse should be burned three times a week to help limit the spread of the plague. No one wandered these streets. Most of the traders’ premises were shut and the familiar cry of ‘What do ye lack?’ had been silenced. Used to the constant din of London, the thunder of hammers on anvils, the booming of the workshops, the shouting and singing and fighting and streets near-packed from wall to wall with people and animals, Will found the scene unaccountably eerie. London held its breath so death would not notice it.

Hands on his knees, Nathaniel sucked in gulps of air. ‘Who were those men?’ he gasped.

Will continued to search the smoke-clogged alley for any sign of pursuit. He knew that from now on he would never be able to rest. ‘Someone would prefer that the murder of Kit Marlowe remain a closed book,’ he replied. Had Thomas Walsingham mentioned the defaced grave at the playwright’s funeral to draw him into the open? Will wondered. Or had some other dark power decided that spies could no longer roam free in London? Step by step, they were being whittled back.

‘Nat, I have work for you, if you can bear to be in this foul, disease-ridden city a moment longer,’ the spy began.

The assistant eyed his master suspiciously, wondering what was to come next.

‘In his letter, Kit said: The truth lies within. But seek the source of the lies without. The first sentence clearly implies he had hidden a message within the play he sent me. The second ...’ Will raised one finger as he turned over his conclusion to be sure it was correct. ‘The lies refers to the story. A fiction. What Kit meant was that we should look in the world around us for the origin of his story of Faustus. If I am correct that will point us in the direction of the answers we need.’

‘There were some plays from abroad about Faust, yes?’ The words were muffled as the assistant covered his mouth and nose to keep out the death-stench.

‘Perhaps. Perhaps there is more to it than that. And I want you to find the answer for me. There are scholars who know these things in London. Seek them out.’ Will clapped a hand on the young man’s shoulder.

‘And you? If even the great and famous Will Swyfte can be hunted in the streets of London I would think you would want to find a safe bolt-hole.’

‘Of course not, Nat. That is exactly what they would expect me to do.’ Though his eyes glittered like ice, Will grinned. ‘First, I go to find John and Robert at our agreed meeting place to share what we all have discovered. And then I ride to the very source of this danger and these lies – Nonsuch Palace.’

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

‘WHO MURDERED MY FRIEND?’ WILL DEMANDED, BURSTING INTO the candlelit chamber with the big mercenary Sinclair at his heels, blood streaming from his nose.

Roaring, the bodyguard lunged for the spy until his master, Sir Robert Cecil, flapped a diffident hand to halt him in his tracks. ‘Leave him. Master Swyfte is searching for a length of rope to hang himself,’ the spymaster said.

Reluctantly, Sinclair retreated, closing the door as he went, but his parting glance left Will in no doubt that retribution was already being planned.

Like its owner, the chamber was filled with shadows that hid a multitude of unpleasant secrets. Plain walnut panelling contained the gloom that pressed in against the single candle in the centre of a large table swamped with papers. There was a chair, a bench and two stools, but no other comforts. Cold, grey ashes cascaded out of a Kentish stone fireplace on the far wall. Despite the heat of the summer night, it was not warm.

Will had expected some resistance when he crossed the moonlit hunting grounds on the last leg of his three-hour ride from London. But as he rode down the sweeping lane to the turreted gatehouse, all was peaceful. Old Henry’s legacy, the grand brick and stone lodge, sprawled beyond, candles gleaming in the windows. The guards allowed him into the inner court without a second glance and the only jarring note was the stark gallows erected to execute any member of the court displaying signs of the plague. Death was the great leveller. Even a royal heart was afflicted with fear of the end.

As the spy made his way through the thrum of servants to Cecil’s chamber on the second floor of the western wing, he found the familiar rhythms of court life troublingly incongruous. The palace appeared untouched by the tensions unfolding in the city.

His ermine-fringed black gown flapping, Cecil went to the window and opened it a little, then stood with his back to Will looking out over the hunting grounds. ‘It is too warm in here. Summer comes up hard, and the beekeepers say it will be hot.’

‘I have no interest in the passing of the seasons. I want—’

‘I know what you want,’ the spymaster snapped, half turning to fix a cold eye on his agent. ‘You waste your time and your breath. What is one death compared to the two thousand victims of the plague this month alone in London?’

‘All deaths are not equal.’ Leaning across the large table, the spy pointed an accusatory finger at his master. ‘Christopher Marlowe was a loyal servant to the Queen, and to England. He sacrificed his pleasures and all his potential to do your work, and the work of your predecessor, Sir Francis. And the fame he achieved for his writing will echo down the years—’

‘Pfft. What use are writers?’ Cecil waved a hand as if swatting a fly.

‘Nevertheless, he deserves more than this lack of concern I find at every turn.’ Will took a breath to steady himself. ‘I would know who ordered his death. And why.’

Clasping his hands behind his back, the spymaster held his head at an aloof angle, but made sure he kept the table between himself and his visitor. ‘Marlowe had few friends,’ he said scornfully. ‘He was barely trustworthy. Time and again the powers of this office were required to save him from punishment. Theft. Deception. The propagation of his unseemly religious views. His inappropriate liaisons with young men. The stabbings and the beatings caused by his vile temper. And on, and on.’

‘Marlowe had his troubles. He was not at peace with the work we do.’ Will clenched his fists on the tabletop, his knuckles growing white.

‘There is no great plot here. No mystery. No wider danger,’ the spymaster stated. ‘Nor is there any meaning to your friend’s death. It was as sordid and empty as anything else in his wasted life.’

‘The man who killed Kit works for Thomas Walsingham. You may be aware of that name,’ the spy pressed.

Cecil flashed a glare at Will’s impudence. ‘And one of the other men there, Skeres, works for Essex,’ he responded sharply.

This new information wrong-footed Will. He had been right: spies everywhere, secret connections, a web in which Marlowe had been caught.

Cecil could see Will’s thoughts play out. ‘I repeat, no plot. There were spies present because that is our world. There are spies everywhere. That is rather the point, is it not?’

Will scrutinized the spymaster for a flicker of guilt that would suggest complicity in the murder. ‘When he was not working, Kit took pains never to associate with spies. He was always a man of great taste.’ Will’s voice dripped acid. ‘Which suggests to me that the meeting in Widow Bull’s house in Deptford concerned our work, in some form or other.’

‘Do you think I would not know of such a meeting if it was our business?’

‘I think you would not tell me.’

Cecil’s cheeks flushed with mounting anger. ‘Marlowe was not in good spirits recently. His temper was short. He acted in an erratic manner. And he was becoming more voluble in expressing his heretical views. The pamphlets were beginning to chide him for his atheism. He could not keep his mouth shut. These are the actions of a man whose wits were abandoning him. In the end, he lost control and paid the price. Nothing more.’

‘It sounds as though his end was a happy one for you and the Privy Council. Words against religion could have incited the population at this time of calamity when the people need God more than ever.’

Cecil slapped the palm of his hand down hard on the table. ‘Now you accuse me.’

‘I merely state a fact.’

Leaning across the table, the spymaster spat, ‘Marlowe was an irritation. And one that was being contained. He was reporting daily to the Privy Council to answer the claims made against him, and give his assurances that he would not continue to make incendiary statements. No charges had been brought, but it was only a matter of time.’

‘Kit was no traitor.’ In a rush of anger, Will swept a goblet from the edge of the table with the back of his hand. Cecil leapt back as if he had been scalded.

‘So you say,’ the spymaster growled. His gaze flickered towards the closed door beyond which Sinclair waited. ‘In this time of permanent war, when the Unseelie Court circles constantly, ready to strike, and Spain unleashes plot after plot, what other word would you use to describe one of our own citizens who sets out to undermine the established order?’