Scorpion's Nest (2012) Read online

  Table of Contents

  A Selection of Recent Titles by M. J. Trow

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  A Selection of Recent Titles by M. J. Trow

  The Inspector Lestrade Series

  LESTRADE AND THE SAWDUST RING

  LESTRADE AND THE MIRROR OF MURDER

  LESTRADE AND THE KISS OF HORUS

  LESTRADE AND THE DEVIL’S OWN

  The Peter Maxwell Series

  MAXWELL’S CHAIN

  MAXWELL’S REVENGE

  MAXWELL’S RETIREMENT

  MAXWELL’S ISLAND

  The Kit Marlowe Series

  DARK ENTRY *

  SILENT COURT *

  WITCH HAMMER *

  SCORPIONS’ NEST *

  * available from Severn House

  SCORPIONS’ NEST

  M. J. Trow

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  First published in Great Britain and the USA 2013 by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

  9 – 15 High Street, Sutton, Surrey, England, SM1 1DF.

  eBook edition first published in 2013 by Severn House Digital

  an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited.

  Copyright © 2013 by M. J. Trow and Maryanne Coleman

  The right of M. J. Trow to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  Trow, M. J.

  Scorpions’ nest.

  1. Marlowe, Christopher, 1564-1593–Fiction.

  2. Walsingham, Francis, Sir, 1530?-1590–Fiction.

  3. English College (Douai, France)–Fiction. 4. Great

  Britain–History–Elizabeth, 1558-1603–Fiction.

  5. Detective and mystery stories.

  I. Title

  823.9'2-dc23

  ISBN-13: 978-1-78010-388-4 (Epub)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-78029-039-3 (cased)

  Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.

  This eBook produced by

  Palimpsest Book Production Limited,

  Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland.

  ONE

  Dark is never totally dark. Even in the deepest cave the eyes staring into the blackness begin to see sparks and flashes which are not in front of the eyes but behind, inside the brain itself. In a room, thick curtains over the window notwithstanding, there is light enough to see by, if a man waits for long enough so that his eyes accustom themselves to the velvet dark. Shades of black are possible, as every artist knows, and it was by the shades of black that Kit Marlowe knew that someone had come into his room. He waited quietly, breathing shallowly through his mouth, trying to quieten even the beat of his heart. Kit Marlowe was a good listener.

  The shape, black on black, edged round the room, laying gentle fingers on the edges of the furniture. Once, it stubbed its toe against a pile of books and Marlowe heard the indrawn breath as whoever was there waited to see if they fell and woke the dead. Marlowe shuffled in his sheets and made little drinking noises before settling back down to silence. It wouldn’t do to lie too still; all sleepers made some kind of sound. After a pause that seemed to last an hour, the black shape moved again and this time reached the table, positioned in front of the window, to get the last of the light each evening and so save candle wax.

  Marlowe lay back on his pillows, smiling in the darkness. He started to count slowly to himself. He didn’t expect to get into double figures. ‘One,’ he breathed as the figure quietly lifted the lid of the ornate box on the table.

  ‘Two.’ There was a louder breath from the figure by the window. If an exhaled breath could be a question, then this was one.

  ‘Three.’ Marlowe could have spoken the word aloud, because the scream from near the window would have drowned him out. And if not the scream, then the snap of iron jaws closing just seconds before the scream would have been almost loud enough.

  The dark figure ran the few steps to the door, but seemed to be crouching over as he ran, as a man might if he were cradling one hand in another as the pain shot up his arm like white hot lightning. Marlowe waited in the darkness for another moment, until he heard the door at the bottom of his staircase slam, reverberating on its hinges. Then he climbed from his bed and crossed to the window, pulling back the curtain. He peered down into the quadrangle just in time to see a figure disappear into a door opposite, making for the street. Smiling, he let the curtain fall and felt with practised fingers for the tinderbox on his table. Striking a spark, he lit a stub of candle and held it up, near his face. Then, he lifted the lid of the box.

  In the flickering light of the candle, he looked down on what at first sight looked like two small hands, made of metal, folded in prayer. The middle fingers gleamed wetly, as though painted red. A nice little piece of machinery, part of the armoury of Nicholas Faunt and his kind, the men who listened at keyholes. It had been impressed upon Marlowe most firmly that this had not been tested in the field yet, that no one knew quite what damage it might be able to inflict on prying fingers. They should be pleased that he could now fill in this gap in their knowledge. When he next saw Robin Greene in the cloisters, the market or the Buttery, he could ask him what it felt like. He looked a little closer. No actual fingers, sadly, but plenty of blood. He checked the untouched papers. All was well. Perhaps the plagiarizing fool would learn his lesson this time and leave Marlowe’s plays alone.

  With a tight smile, he went back to his bed and slid between the sheets. Blowing his candle out, he turned over and was immediately dead to the world.

  Dark is never totally dark. And the dark in Nicholas Faunt’s bedchamber was less dark than it seemed, with small and cunning slits in the curtains letting through the faint grey of predawn to bounce off concealed mirrors to light a cranny here, a nook there. Faunt had wrapped himself in a fur, quieter in movement than leather, and had propped himself up against the bed head to wait. The night had been long and he had nearly nodded off a couple of times, but the holly leaf tied under his chin had given him its non-too-gentle warning each time and now the worst was past; the dawn was almost here. He was getting a little testy, though; when he had settled down to watch and wait, he had not expected to be watching and waiting quite this long.

  Suddenly, he pricked up his ears. The topmost stair was famous throughout the house as having a squeak to wake the dead, so all the housemaids knew to avoid it early in the morning. They didn’t know that the third board along the gallery from the topmost stair was rigged to ring a tiny bell on Faunt’s bedstead; they just thought it was a
marvel that the master was always sitting up smiling, waiting for them to bring in the beer and heel of fresh-baked manchet bread with which he began his day. He had the bell in his hand now, silencing its tongue, but he felt the vibration and stiffened. Someone was creeping very, very slowly towards the door of his room. But how prepared were they for all of his little tricks?

  He smiled wryly as he sensed rather than heard that the intruder had avoided the tiny caltraps he had scattered outside his door and made a mental note to sweep them up before dawn. They already had two servants laid up with pedal injuries and three would test housekeeping beyond endurance. He took in a deep breath and held it as the door edged open, just a tiny amount. He nodded when he realized that the heavy weight propped over the door – designed to alert rather than maim, though there was nothing wrong with maiming in Faunt’s view – was lifted and removed by skilful fingers.

  Then, suddenly, all Hell broke loose and he reached across and uncovered the window of the dark lantern beside the bed. In its flare, he saw a man pinned to the ground by a heavy net, anchored at two corners by boxes, attached to the floor by staples and to each other by a loosened tripwire, their lids open, and at the others by crossbow bolts, still quivering with the impact.

  With the light, the man stopped struggling and turned beseeching eyes up to meet Faunt’s. ‘This is none too comfortable, Nicholas,’ he said. ‘And how that left-hand bolt missed my head I’ll never know. It parted my hair.’

  Faunt was sitting at the end of the bed, feet folded in front of him, knees raised. He looked like a homicidal schoolboy. He gave a low chuckle. ‘Thomas, Thomas, Thomas,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘If you were really burgling my house, I wouldn’t care overmuch whether it took your head from your shoulders.’

  The man under the net made a strangled noise of dissent and wriggled his shoulders. ‘Let me out,’ he said, then louder, ‘let me out. You’re scaring me, Nicholas. Let me out!’

  Faunt jumped down and reached into first one box, then the other, releasing the net, then folded it back to release the struggling man. ‘Stay still,’ he enjoined him. ‘You’re all caught up somewhere. It’s your dagger. Wait . . .’ Faunt was vaguely surprised he was carrying one. He unravelled the net and the man was free.

  Thomas Phelippes was not at all amused. He was not a man of action, as any casual observer could tell. He was slightly built and had something of a scholar’s stoop. He wore his thirty-odd years lightly, but he was pale and didn’t look like a man who saw much of the sun. He was a thinker, not a doer and Faunt’s latest amusement, to get Phelippes to try out his newest ideas, did not strike him as at all funny.

  ‘This won’t do, Nicholas,’ he said, standing up and tweaking his doublet back into some kind of comfort. ‘I’m far too old for your little games.’ He felt all rucked up in the unmentionables, but decided that adjustment could wait. ‘Those caltraps could have maimed me.’

  ‘Ah –’ Faunt tapped Phelippes on the shoulder with an admonitory finger – ‘you were too clever for me there, Thomas.’ Faunt could patronize for England and win against all comers.

  ‘And the weight over the door?’

  ‘Again, what can I say? You mastered me once again.’

  Phelippes harrumphed and metaphorically ruffled his feathers. He turned to the tangled mess behind him, the ruined floor, the place where his blood and brains might well have been. ‘I doubt this will come in too useful, though,’ he said. ‘Too much damage, too easy to spot.’

  ‘You didn’t spot it, though, did you, Master Phelippes, eh? And you knew it was there.’

  ‘In fairness, Nicholas, no, I did not. Since you had moved it full three cloth yards, I had no idea it was there.’

  Faunt chuckled. ‘It had to be a proper test, Thomas, or what would be the point? You did well, though I think you may be right; this is not an engine which will see much use in the normal way of things. Well done, though, well done.’ He went over to the window and pulled back a draped curtain to let in the grey light of dawn. ‘How late it is getting. I must clear the caltraps, before the kitchen sends up food to break my fast.’

  As he spoke, the tiny bell rang and before the clapper was still, the scream of Faunt’s third maimed maidservant echoed in from the gallery.

  ‘Damn.’

  Dark is not always dark. The two sets of breath from the bed made the only sound, but the faint light of the half moon and the stars came in through the uncurtained window and picked out the rise and fall of two breasts in perfect harmony. It gleamed on the pale ovals of four nails of fingers lightly curled into a palm, it glinted off two lips, damp with the pearl of sleep. It sprang from the tip of the upraised blade, it splintered in the spray of gushing blood. It shone into the mouth opened, screaming. It lit the buckles on the booted foot as it kicked back the door in its flight.

  Dark is not always dark.

  TWO

  ‘Good morning, Betsy.’ Kit Marlowe was in merry mood as he bounced up the last few steps into the Buttery at St John’s College, ducking under the archway with its rose and portcullis, there just to remind everyone who was patron of the place these days. ‘A fine morning, so late in the summer. It’s lease has, after all, too short a date, wouldn’t you say?’

  Betsy was in a quandary. Kit Marlowe was the darling of every maid from scullery upwards throughout all the colleges in Cambridge, but their masters were not always so taken with his charms. Someone, a penny-pinching Bursar, had worked out how much he cost the university, breaking his fast and taking his luncheons and suppers wherever he thought fit and, by some quirk of possibly inaccurate mathematics, had brought forth a figure similar to the complete upkeep of the menagerie at the Tower. It was suggested gently by some kinder souls that surely even the mercurial Master Marlowe didn’t eat as much as even one very small lion, but the damage was done. He was to be forbidden entry to any refectory but his own and, even there, he was to pay his reckoning at the end of every week, rather than never.

  ‘Oh, Master Marlowe . . .’ Betsy began, thinking hard but none too fast. ‘You can’t go in there, because . . .’

  He stood, mellow sunlight filled with golden dust motes sparkling around the aureole of his hair. ‘Because?’ He cocked an eyebrow.

  Betsy, caught on her back foot, could think of nothing. She shrugged. ‘Fresh eggs today, Master Marlowe,’ she said. ‘Fresh sent in from Cherry Hinton. You’ll get one if you’re quick.’

  Marlowe leant out of his sunbeam to put a friendly arm around the girl’s shoulders. ‘You look after me so well, Betsy,’ he said, smiling. ‘This is my very favourite place to eat in the whole university.’ He paused, taking in the bright reds and blues of the stained glass and the fierce-looking Masters of generations gone by who frowned at him from their gilded frames. ‘Possibly, in the whole world.’

  Betsy grimaced, but happily and pushed him off. ‘Go on with you, Master Marlowe,’ she said, a laugh in her voice. ‘But don’t say I let you pass. I could lose my position if they find it was me.’

  ‘My lips are sealed,’ he said and turned to the door. ‘Oh, one thing, though. Is Master Greene here yet?’

  ‘I haven’t seen him,’ Betsy said. ‘And glad not to have. Nasty, posturing thing he is.’

  ‘He is, he is, indeed he is,’ carolled Marlowe, swinging round the doorpost and into the hall. The fun was still to come, then.

  Sir Francis Walsingham stood in the shadows of the awning that had been strung across the frontage of the merchant’s house on the edge of St Giles’ Fields. This ought to have been a great day for him but the boil on his neck was infected and bleeding and his whole body ached. The sun was shining on the iron helmets of Her Majesty’s guard and the bells of the city were crying out their joy. Her Majesty’s enemies would meet their God today. He had delivered the great Queen – not for the first time – and her people had turned out in their thousands to see the murdering bastards turned off.

  All the way from Tower Hill they had been spat at and ki
cked as they struggled on their hurdles, the ropes that lashed them to the timbers cutting into their wrists and ankles. Each of the seven bore the marks of the Rackmaster. Chideock Tichborne was barely conscious; Henry Dunne couldn’t see out of his right eye; every bone in the hand of the chameleon-like James Ballard was broken. Now they had reached the open space of St Giles, they were hauled up from the ground and their wrists tied behind their backs. The crowd surged forward, threatening to break the cordon of steel that the Lord Mayor had set up.

  The bells were still pealing – Paul’s, St Giles’, St Magnus’, St Mary’s – drowning out the charges of conspiracy levelled against each of them by the Lieutenant of the Tower. The crowd had nothing but contempt for all of them, but there was only one they had come to see turned off. Anthony Babington took his place on the high scaffold first. The Rackmaster had knocked out three of his teeth and his once-handsome face was a mask of blood. The Queen for whom he was about to die had captivated him as a child when he had seen her walking with the Earl of Shrewsbury, a prisoner even then. He had not even known she was a queen, let alone the queen of a whole country, the Queen of Scots. She was a gentle-faced little woman, dressed in black, with crisp white at her throat. She had held out her little dog for him to stroke, had smiled her quiet smile and he had given his heart to her, in that childish, romantic way that some men have. Now he would give his head.

  But giving his head was a euphemism Francis Walsingham had engineered. He watched from his secret corner, almost on a level with the scaffold as the executioner showed Babington the tools of his dubious trade, gleaming wickedly on a blanket of velvet. Sam Bull was hardly the most elegant gentleman on Walsingham’s pay roll but he knew his job. His thick neck was covered in strips of black leather that hung from the hideous mask that covered his face. Both Bull and his master knew that the crowd’s mood could turn in these moments on a groat and many was the common hangman chased out of town by an ungrateful mob bent on tearing him apart. To that end, the mask. To that end, the pay – half now, half when the job was done.